BORCE PANOV

BORCE PANOV

The Eskimos Are Speaking

the earth has shifted

the sun is higher, and the east wind – stronger

we used to go hunting seals with the dogs early in the morning

we had only one hour of light

today we have two

the day is higher on the horizon

the sun is rising from the same spot again

but the sunset is shifted

the earth has tilted axis

the sun used to be on the top of the mountain

and now it’s higher than the highest top

and it’s warmer –

there are no snowy tongues of the north wind hovering

and they don’t show us the path in the whiteness anymore

the day is wider than the line of the glasses made of baleen

the earth is tilted

the stories that we are carving on the sea lions’ tusks

are still telling us about the white bears

that we were hunting with frozen balls of whale blubber

in which we put rolled and elastic, but sharp whale bone

that was growing in the bears’ stomach

just to make a rapture, and now the changes

are doing it to us – they shift our lives

from the socket of the Milky Way’s joint

so the stars are lined up in the wrong direction, too

the earth has shifted

there are no snowy tongues of the north wind hovering

and they don’t show us the path in the whiteness anymore

the north wind is like the east wind, now

and it brings us bad weather

and something bad is happening to the earth...

The Blood’s Voice

Poetry is gravitation

with which we attract those words

with which we travel in the deepest places in us

we travel and we discover some of our “I”

splashed on the places and the times

as mirrors from which we had been looking at each other once upon a time

we gather the mosaic on one place

and there is the word starting to shine

before the first murder

we travel, and the voice of the brother’s blood

is shouting at us deep from the ground

and then I remembered that my parents

were stabbing a knife on a dry place

so the storm could never exterminate the crops

they never explained to me how the knife could

stop the hail and the flood

and I thought that it would pass them in “the eye of a needle”

and that it would give them back to the earth like a thread

I wonder – how can we bring back the bloods’ voice to the ground

so it could not feel thirsty

and then I know that the gravity of honesty

will gather all of the words found in the question:

Will we ever recognize ourselves in the mirror?

Apocalypse

Are we waiting for the hidden clocks to come,

do we imagine the keys

with which we will go out of the time

Is it enough to sense our pulse with our forefinger

Is the night becoming a dark body of our heart

Is our sleeplessness brightened by the dawn

Are the thoughts chirping to us with the birds

arrayed like notes in the architecture of the forest

What is the proportion of the force with which our pressure is pushing against the blood vessel walls,

if we know that from outside, from the edge of the universe and the Earth,

on only one square centimeter,

every moment, one kilogram of air pressures us

Will the rooms run away from our houses

and in the streets, the cities all in panic,

will the air of this time

and the rivers and the bad odor of the corps in the dry riverbeds

Will God be dark at the end of the sky

like a star amoeba that collects our minds

million of years since the beginning of the dreams

Will we dress up with the peeled Sun

with the letters of Morse of the blinds,

and the last prayer like a skin of a snake

from which the reptile of the apocalypse has been born

Is the night becoming a dark body of our heart,

Is our sleeplessness brightened by the dawn,

Are the thoughts chirping to us with the birds

arrayed like notes in the architecture of the forest

Little Collar Dove

Each spring on the window lands

and with its black crescent around the nape

adorns itself and looks at its own reflection,

the collar dove with its wedding apron

and with the beak of gold

from the golden pollen of the pine trees

it adorns the mirror

but the truth is – it adorns me and it nudges me

from the other side of the glass

so I could postpone cutting off the old pine tree

with the nest on it, this year, too

 

TRANSLATED FROM MACEDONIAN TO ENGLISH BY DANIELA ANDONOVSKA-TRAJKOVSKA

BORCE PANOV

BORCE PANOV Of the Republic of North Macedonia, was born on September 27, 1961 in Radovish, The Republic of North Macedonia. He graduated from the ''Sts. Cyril and Methodius'' University of Skopje in Macedonian and South Slavic Languages (1986). He has been a member of the “Macedonian Writers’ Association” since 1998. He has published: a) poetry: “What did Charlie Ch. See from the Back Side of the Screen” (1991), “The Cyclone Eye” (1995), “Stop, Charlie” (2002), “The Tact” (2006), “The Riddle of Glass” (2008), “The Basilica of Writing” (2010), “Mystical Supper” (2012), “Vdah (The Breathe of Life)” (2014), “The Human Silences” (2016), “Uhania” (2017), “Shell” (2018); and several essays and plays: “The Fifth Season of the Year” (2000), “The Doppelgänger Town” (2011), “A Dead-end in the Middle of an Alley” (2002), “Homo Soapiens” (2004), “Catch the Sleep-walker” (2005), “Split from the Nose Down” (2006), and “The Summertime Cinema” (2007). He has also poetry books published in other languages: “Particles of Hematite” (2016 - in Macedonian and Bulgarian), “Vdah” (2017 – in Slovenian), “Balloon Shaving” (2018 – Serbian), and “Fotostiheza” (“Photopoesis, 2019 – Bulgarian). His poetry was published in a number of anthologies, literary magazines and journals both at home and abroad, and his works are translated into English, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, French, Catalonian, Mongolian, Albanian, Romanian, Polish, and Danish language. Panov works as the Counselor for Culture and Education at the municipality of Radovish, and he is also Arts Coordinator for the “International Karamanov’s Poetry Festival”, held in Radovish annually.