GANE TODOROVSKI
b. 1929

Started writing from his school career. The first book of his poems was In The Dawns (in 1951) and six more poetry collections have appeared until 1974. He has been translated into other languages of Yugoslavia and also abroad. His patriotic poems that depict the sufferings and the longing for freedom, the ideals and the sacrifices of revolutionaries and poets, the struggle of the Liberation War and the exultations in freedom are remarkable pieces in the history of Macedonian literature.

BIOGRAPHY

I was born
That is an absolute fact

I've lived some time
That's indisputable

Who needs me?
Everyone must know himself

Am I in someone's way?
Let him ignore me

It's much too undesirable
To be chosen as the enemy

This life is fiendish
But I'm a fact of it.

I'll die only to prove
that I have truly lived.

PARTING

You're leaving and not looking back
the age-old fear of turning into stone
now germinates in you like pain
that something passes and you're left
alone

You're leaving and you carry much
in that mute threat of yours
without a note, forgiveness, of farewell
cold marble, dry-eyed, no remorse

You're leaving hurriedly and without
voice
and flapping like a startled bird:
you disappear beyond return and soon
become a shadow, neither seen
nor heard

MAP OF MACEDONIA

Would it be possible with such
aloofness,
with two or three talkative lines and
with two or three conversational
colours,
to splash on a canvas the idea of
one's native land?

Well yes, it would be possible!

Our destiny is framed
like something turned upside down,
doubled up in pain the horizons
of hope,
crushed the visions labelled refuge,
truth spread out on the palm
of the hand
and the pictorial perfection
of no way out.

But all you see is a compass and a map
and many pencils scattered about it,
sharpened if not smoothed,
so they can prove themselves
in a proud role:
looking at lines we look at grief,
we look at our history -

What we have framed here
is not just a sigh
preserved in another colour -

That, too, would be possible;
quite possible.

BLACKBERRY

Blackberry, droplet of God
Red-black mystery of earth
Defender of summer
Surrounded by thorns

You are the fruit of ripe pleasure
A gift to all those who need you
You lend bliss to our day
Which was parched and dry
under the lid of midsummer heat

Where you are not: unequalled
barrenness
Where you are: delight in existence
You hang there heavy with
the sun's blood
You hang there with a thousand
eyes of ruby pride
And those who pass you by
you regard with the bloodshot
feral eyes
of dying summer

May he who grabs you scratch himself
May he feel pain who cannot
ask politely
May he suffer who cannot understand
the unattainable mystery of your
unapproachable beauty
You prickly proud beauty
of summer's generosity
Live on as a lasting warning
to all inexperienced wantons
for beauty
that sweet delight and the stars
are only reached through thorns