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Long Have I Lived in This Place
Long have I lived in this place
Where the waters well up out of mountains,
And children chase butterflies,
And the tall pinewoods
Bud forth the silence of the centuries.
Long have I lived in this place
And slowly time darkens in me.
Look. I say, look, that you know how it is.
Once these eyes were depths
Into which your desires dived
Like cranes in the sunshine.
And now we are only two dry wells
Passing the night listening to the rains.
Once these hands were plowmen
In the furrowed earth of your longings.
But now you sob to the wollow wands,
Barren forks bending over the water.
Once, I say, that you, like the children,
Caught butterflies in your hand
And from the golden dust
There blossomed cherries in your garden.
Why were you so careless
As to crush them in your Fingers?
Why did you not grasp that greatest wisdom
Lies in having one live butterfly from your childhood,
One warm star in your palm,
That will light up this place,
This place where long we have lived apart?
Long have we lived, time darkening in us.
Ацо Шопов, Небиднина, 1963
Translated from Macedonian (A Yugoslavian language) by Marcia Pennington
Published in Trial Impression, a literary magazine produced by the English Department’s Literary Editing class (Engl. 296), Volume 2, Number 2, 1979, p. 7
Long have I lived in this place,
with mountain springs gushing beneath it,
where the children chase butterflies
and the pine trees in voiceless grandeur
leaf out the silence of the ages.
Long have I lived in this place
and slowly have I darkened from time.
Look, I say, see what you’ve become:
you cannot even recognize yourself.
These eyes were once deep pools
into which your desires would dive
like cranes in the sunlight.
But now they are merely two hollows
where occasional rains may spend a night.
These arms were once plowmen
in the soft earth of your wanderings.
But now they are like willow branches,
barren and dangling above the waters.
You too, I say, like the children,
once played with butterflies in your hand,
and from their golden dust
cherry trees blossomed in your garden.
Why did you so heedlessly let
them all perish in your fingers?
Why did you not grasp that the greatest wisdom is
to have one living butterfly from your childhood,
one warm star in the palm of your hand,
that would light up this place,
this place where you have long lived in loneliness,
where you have long lived darkened by time.
Ацо Шопов, Небиднина, 1963
Translated by Rawley Grau and Christina Kramer, 2022