\nfrom myself to your not-being.
\nI traveled through fire, through rubble,
\nthrough wastes of ash.
\nIn heat, in drought, in utter darkness.
\nI fed on the bread of your beauty,
\nI drank from the throat of your song.\nDo not look at the dry black gullies
\nthat score my face-
\nI was given them by the face of the earth.
\nDo not look at the crookedness of my shoulders-
\nI received it from the weariness of the hills.\nLook at these arms-
\ntwo fires,
\ntwo rivers
\nof dark waiting.
\nLook at these hands-
\ntwo fields,
\ntwo arid lands
\nof hollow wailing.\nI traveled a long time, traveled an entire eternity,
\nfrom you to my not-being.\n2.
\nAnd everything happened in a single night,
\nnight of trees,
\nnight of leaves,
\nnight of a cold trench.
\nI fell, I drowned in tall grass,
\nin grass and thick moss.\nThis happened in a single night,
\nthe true and the untrue,
\nlike an ancient story
\nburied deep in one’s consciousness.
\nYou came like a muffled flood and carried me off,
\nlike a welling from places underground.\nAnd now alone
\nin front of this hill of pain and humanness,
\non roads I don’t recognize,
\nragged from hunger and curses, I howl.
\nYou came like the black water of an illness
\nin which one is made endlessly sick
\nby all the scourges, all the evils of the world.\n3.
\nTurbid water, black water,
\nevery day you pluck a new flower
\nfrom the stone of my forehead
\nand toss it into the murky depths
\nbeneath the light skin of your body.
\nTurbid water, black water,
\nwho gave you the form
\nof that beautiful, terrible thought,
\nwhich wraps itself around my heart
\nlike a young deer circling a tree?
\nWho gave you that name,
\nturbid water, black water?\nWho is it who sits invisible inside me
\nand lights that fire?
\nWho tears down the wall of my blood?
\nWho robs me of my hearing?
\nWho strips me of my sight?
\nWho tirelessly lays layer upon layer?
\nWho is it who sits invisible inside me?\n4.
\nTree alone on the hill,
\nwoundedness in the loose soil,
\nwho gave you my eyes,
\nwhich ripen in the dream of your leaves?
\nGreen gaze, green rising,
\nwho condemns us to the same watching?
\nTree alone on the hill,
\nwoundedness in the loose soil,
\nhow did your depths come to be inside me,
\nhow did you come to be in my blood?
\nWhose nimble hand wiped away
\nall the distances
\nall the closenesses?
\nWho condemned us to this not-being,
\nI to be tree, you to be song?\n5.
\nUnknown woman, wise woman,
\nyou, always calm, who passes
\nthis window of darkness
\ndeaf to the wailing,
\nblind to the despair-
\nwhere does this false calm come from?
\nHow does my blood come to be inside you?
\nWoman, I have guarded you like a heavy secret,
\nwhich I will not reveal until the day
\nwhen my blood appears, gasping,
\nat an hour of terrible silence,
\nto speak its brave last words,
\nbright as the heights,
\nsharp as a sword.\nHow does my blood, woman,
\ncome to be inside you?
\nI traveled a long time, traveled an entire eternity,
\nfrom us to our not-being.\n\tAco \u0160opov<\/a>, Not-Being (Nebidnina)<\/a><\/em>, 1963
\nTranslated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau,\u00a0The Long Coming of the Fire<\/em><\/a>, Dallas, Deep Vellum, 2023.\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
![\""Not-Being",](\"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Manuscrit-Nebidnina-1-BR.jpg\" "\\"Manuscrit-Nebidnina-1-BR\\"")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t“Not-Being”, manuscript , p. 1\n\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/bb-plugin\/img\/pixel.png\"){kind=tracking}
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t![\""Not-being",](\"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Manuscrit-Nebidnina-2-BR.jpg\" "\\"Manuscrit-Nebidnina-2-BR\\"")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t“Not-being”, manuscript , p. 2\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t![\""Not-Being",](\"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Manuscrit-Nebidnina-3-BR.jpg\" "\\"Manuscrit-Nebidnina-3-BR\\"")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t“Not-Being”, manuscript , p. 3\n\tListen to excerpts from the poem in Macedonian<\/p>\n\t\t