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My body beseeches you: My body beseeches you: Find it such a word, a word that is true, Find it a word of birth, of wailing, Aco Šopov, Not-Being, 1963 Written in an intensely focused, meditative tone of pain, love, and hope, which is sustained over eleven poems, the cycle “Prayers of My Body” is an powerful achievement worthy to stand among the great works of postwar European poetry. –Prayer for an Ordinary Word Not Yet Found
Find it a word that is like ordinary wood,
like hands that are charred and as bare as our ancestors,
like the innocence of all the first prayers ever prayed.
For such a word, my body beseeches you.
Find it a word that—as soon as it’s said as a cry—
the blood starts to ache without knowing why,
and looks for a channel in which it can flow.
For such a word, my body beseeches you.
that is like all the quiet captives held fast
by that soft wind, that southern breeze
which awakens the little deer in our eyes.
Find it such a word, a word that is true.
find such a word. And this temple, locked
in its ancientness and large from waiting,
will open to you humbly, of its own accord.
Find it a word of birth, of wailing.
Read the cycle “Prayers of My Body”
Translated by Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer, The Long Coming of the Fire, Deep Vellum, 2023
Listen to the poem in Macedonian, read by Sofija Gogova-VrčakovskaListen to the poem in Macedonian, read by Slavko Ninov
Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer.
Roman Kissiov: Prayers of my body