{"id":81189,"date":"2024-08-18T13:01:09","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T11:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/%d1%82%d0%b0%d0%b6%d0%b0%d1%87%d0%ba%d0%b0\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T19:12:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T18:12:04","slug":"lament-from-the-other-side-of-life","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/reading-room\/poetry-shelf\/lament-from-the-other-side-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Lament from the Other Side of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\t\t\tLament from the Other Side of Life\t<\/h1>\n\tI climbed above the summit of the pain.
\nI am human. But what is a human?
\nEmptiness before me, emptiness behind me.
\nEmptiness that catches fire.\nFrom the other side of life,
\nwith strong knots crucified alive,
\nI climbed above the summit of the pain.
\nThat day. Blackday. Up black stairs.\nI climbed above the summit of the pain.
\nFrom the other side of life,
\nfrom the other side of myself,
\nof everything not spoken,
\neverything not burned away,
\nfrom the other side of the water,
\nfrom the other side of the wellspring,
\nfrom the other side of the root.\nDissolve, clump of clay, flow out, water,
\noverflow, cup of keening,
\nfor all the cities of this city,
\nall the grievings of this grieving.
\nTell me who to blame,
\nwho to feel sorry for? Tell me!
\nO child who is no more-
\nmy grieving, your embrace.\nMy grieving, your embrace,
\nyour darkness, my netherworld.
\nO earth of keening, earth of desert,
\nfrom dead weeping grown,
\nearth, look around, earth, uncover yourself.\nTake this eye,
\ntake this wheat
\nin your withered hand.\nTake me, earth, or bring me back,
\nbring me back below this summit,
\nbelow the other side of life,
\nreturn my human powers to me.
\nO earth, bring me back to earth.
\nI am human, meant as a human to suffer;
\nto find stone, to wall myself up alive
\nin an arch on some bridge.\n\tAco \u0160opov<\/a>,\u00a0Reader of the Ashes<\/em><\/a>, 1970
\nTranslated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau,\u00a0The Long Coming of the Fire<\/em><\/a>, Dallas, Deep Vellum, 2023.\n

The poem was also published in the\u00a0journal\u00a0Asymptote<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\"\u0422\u043e\u043b\u043a\u0443\u0432\u0430\u045a\u0435\n\t

On the morning of July 26, 1963-the same year that\u00a0Not-Being<\/i> <\/a>was published-the city of Skopje, Macedonia’s capital, was struck by a devastating earthquake. Over a thousand people were killed, several thousand were injured, and over a hundred thousand were left homeless. \u0160opov responded to the disaster with some of his most powerful poems, including “Horrordeath<\/a>“, “August<\/a>“, and “Lament from the Other Side of Life”. […<\/i>] The poet’s most immediate literary response, however, was the prose piece “At Five Seventeen”, published in both the Macedonian and Serbian press soon after the earthquake occurred. – Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer in “The Fire Is Here: The Long Journey of Aco \u0160opov”<\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lament from the Other Side of Life I climbed above the summit of the pain. I am human. But what is a human? Emptiness before me, emptiness behind me. Emptiness that catches fire. From the other side of life, with strong knots crucified alive, I climbed above the summit of the pain. That day. Blackday.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":98423,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-81189","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81189"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102403,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81189\/revisions\/102403"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}