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The Golden Circle of Time
Ancient star, star of prophecy and miracles,
explode into the poem, sink into the darkest gloom.
Longer in the blood does this mad light linger,
and this invisible flame without sign or name.
Ghost of a star, star of a cold nightmare,
vanish with all the fates, fall with all the fables.
Beneath this tree of words encrusted with age-old bark,
a terrible fire is sparking and hungry roots are burning.
Who are you who comes here scarred by the dust of a distant era
and with an age that ended long ago never to return—
coming not in the form of some poor wretch despairing,
but bringing instead cruel law for yourself and for your clan?
Sound out with a howl of silence, speak with a mute gaze,
in your speech overvaulted with all-powerful knots,
and like a useless soldier with chernozem eyes
look back at the golden circle and triumphantly burn out.
Ancient star, star of prophecy and miracles,
explode into the poem, sink into the deepest word,
until this mad light no longer lingers in the blood,
this netherworldly fire, this undying heat.
Aco Šopov, Reader of the Ashes (Гледач во пепелта), 1970
Translated by Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer, 2022