Not-Being

1.

I traveled a long time, traveled an entire eternity,
from myself to your not-being.
I traveled through fire, through rubble,
through wastes of ash.
In heat, in drought, in utter darkness.
I fed on the bread of your beauty,
I drank from the throat of your song.

Do not look at the dry black gullies
that score my face—
I was given them by the face of the earth.
Do not look at the crookedness of my shoulders—
I received it from the weariness of the hills.

Look at these arms—
two fires,
two rivers
of dark waiting.
Look at these hands—
two fields,
two arid lands
of hollow wailing.

I traveled a long time, traveled an entire eternity,
from you to my not-being.

2.
And everything happened in a single night,
night of trees,
night of leaves,
night of a cold trench.
I fell, I drowned in tall grass,
in grass and thick moss.

This happened in a single night,
the true and the untrue,
like an ancient story
buried deep in one’s consciousness.
You came like a muffled flood and carried me off,
like a welling from places underground.

And now alone
in front of this hill of pain and humanness,
on roads I don’t recognize,
ragged from hunger and curses, I howl.
You came like the black water of an illness
in which one is made endlessly sick
by all the scourges, all the evils of the world.

3.
Turbid water, black water,
every day you pluck a new flower
from the stone of my forehead
and toss it into the murky depths
beneath the light skin of your body.
Turbid water, black water,
who gave you the form
of that beautiful, terrible thought,
which wraps itself around my heart
like a young deer circling a tree?
Who gave you that name,
turbid water, black water?

Who is it who sits invisible inside me
and lights that fire?
Who tears down the wall of my blood?
Who robs me of my hearing?
Who strips me of my sight?
Who tirelessly lays layer upon layer?
Who is it who sits invisible inside me?

4.
Tree alone on the hill,
woundedness in the loose soil,
who gave you my eyes,
which ripen in the dream of your leaves?
Green gaze, green rising,
who condemns us to the same watching?
Tree alone on the hill,
woundedness in the loose soil,
how did your depths come to be inside me,
how did you come to be in my blood?
Whose nimble hand wiped away
all the distances
all the closenesses?
Who condemned us to this not-being,
I to be tree, you to be song?

5.
Unknown woman, wise woman,
you, always calm, who passes
this window of darkness
deaf to the wailing,
blind to the despair—
where does this false calm come from?
How does my blood come to be inside you?
Woman, I have guarded you like a heavy secret,
which I will not reveal until the day
when my blood appears, gasping,
at an hour of terrible silence,
to speak its brave last words,
bright as the heights,
sharp as a sword.

How does my blood, woman,
come to be inside you?
I traveled a long time, traveled an entire eternity,
from us to our not-being.

Ацо Шопов, Небиднина, 1963
Translated by Rawley Grau and Christina Kramer, 2022