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Tenth Prayer of My Body

This is that place, that captive beauty,
that miraculous death from blue and white,
from the blue and white in the eyes of the wind;
this is that brutish thing, that body.

This is that place, that beauty which pales
before all pasts and before all presents,
before your primordially dark unease—
this is that untraversable roughness.

You stand here silent and unseen
above this quieted, unknown maelstrom.
Be to it a burbling, health-giving springtime,
if you would command it and dwell within.

And without asking, anciently curious,
if it is a faithful prisoner of the verities,
enter quietly and unnoticed,
enter with the wisdom of the years.

Aco Šopov, Not-Being, 1963
Read the cycle “Prayers of My Body”
Translated by Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer, The Long Coming of the Fire, Deep Vellum, 2023