ANTE POPOVSKI
b. 1931

Poet, essyist and critic. He worked as a managing director of the newspaper Nova Makedonija, a director of the film company Vardar film, and president of the Struga Poetry Evenings festival. Included in all antologues of Macedonian poetry. Transleted in Italian, Serbian, Slovenian, Romanian, Greek etc.

A MAN, A BIRD...

At dusk a white bird lands on his shoulder,
caresses him playfully, whispers:

- Let me for a single night
hide in your dreams...
- Lend me your wings
I will fly across a single sky...

The bird falls asleep. He still flies
alone across the sky of his language...

FEAR

The wind wandered through the branches
of the young tree,
the branches murmured, pleading with the wind:
We are afraid to be alone at night,
whisper to the bird in the next tree, ask her
to spend the night with us...

MY NEPHEW SINGS

I hear my nephew on the telephone
singing at the top of his voice...
His voice unfurls like a banner
sprinkled with flowers, stars, birds,
and everything around me rises to its feet
to hear the song and say a prayer:
May your voice and your song, dear,
become a precious memory older than the Bible...

BLUE BIRD

You will easily know my blue bird:

it does not peck at bark or the fruits of trees,
nor perch on rocks, nor lurks by carrion and bones -
my bird never descends from heaven.

My bird christens celestial barbarians,
turns light into writing by which
uncertainly, bone-white, dagger-cold

rampages through us...

Only a word could have climbed
so high, to the very stars,
my blue bird,

its beak sounds, its wings verbs.