JOVAN PAVLOVSKI
b. 1937

Born in Tetovo, a professional journalist since 1956 and a member of the Writers' Association of Macedonia since 1962. A correspondent of Nova Makedonija from Paris and Moscow. An author of over thirty books of poetry, prose and journalism. A winner of high acknowledgements for literature and journalism. A president of the Writers' Association of Macedonia for two mandates.

TO IMITATE THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS IS TO DIE

He genuinely takes off
and apparently: his craft
deconstructs all possible theories
of the motion of solid object through the air.
In the airy commotion it
reaches the maximum of vertical pressure.
Its presence above our heads
is both a challenge and a reason for unrest
it announces a new, lasting identify
an unexpacted redistribution of things
and the self-protection system.
While doing it, Otto commits a mortal sin:
he, a reptile, imitates the flight of birds,
trying to displace things from their usual places
and drag the reptiles into airy commotions.
His attempt transcends him in the realm of dreams,
he crumbles.
People sigh relieved.
But beyond the frontier of the visible
Otto Lilienthal's craft
still glides on.
Enlarged.

THE GETHSEMANE NIGHT OF JACQUES FRISCH

Merely shadows over Lyons prison.
And the soft murmur of a prayer-father Oiseau prays.
As Jacques Frisch confesses
you cannot tell if he condemns or curses:
"Nothing is worse nor more shameful
than a generally established, humiliating situation.
People crazy with fear and toil
are eager to kill.
I was one of them!"

Tonight the structure of his personality will be put in jeopardy,
and the cold of the world will inhabit him
and soon he will turn into his forefathers.
Still, he is content: he has met his vital need for destruction
which filled and emptied him again and again.
And happy: he will identify himself with his parents!
Maybe he knows:
he only prolongs the public challenge,
the interaction of several complex situations.
Father Oiseau beholds:
the convict commences a slow, heavy, wonrous,
everlasting ascent.
It is merely an odd kind of insanity, he thinks
himself reconciled with death,
(Ionesco: Frisch deserves death,
since he is indifferent to it!)

Thus he deprives death of its
mysterious, transcedental flavour.
Ultimately,
Jacques Fricsh has one wish left:
to accelerate the separation of spirit from flesh
so that now he is able to begin
the exploration of prohibited areas.
(Based on the foonote on J. Frisch's death in the "Anthropology of death" by L. V. Toma)

WHEN HE CONSIDERS, YET

When he considers, yet:
he had to be possible in life!
He gets bogged downin details, and behold:
whatever he does - all leads to
self-denial, exhaustion,
and his soul
changes from capricorn to iris, from insect to customs official.
Satisfied, he opposes dream
and demolishes the extreme parts of his own past.
Thus, I will save my soul again, he claims,
and prepare its future content!
And he perceives, oh God, how clearly perceives;
The more he digs into himself, the more he gets poorer and poorer!
Something is missing,
something utterly tangible,
which may him fill up the cracks in time,
to withhold the drifting apart of events within himself,
forwards and backwards.
And when he considers: O.K., now things are all right,
he reveals the ruins within himself, in horror!
He digs up only insignificant pieces within them,
some small parts,
and wants to give up, to sigh.

AS THE GIRL BECOMES IMMACULATE

As the girl becomes immaculate
things simplify within him. He is freezing.
As if the sun of established prejudice has multiplied.
The formula of simple living vanishes into thin air:
going home, to work, a game of chess with friends!

Now, there it stands, before him, the unbearable
whiteness,
the soft pleasure,
a skin like skin,
and he is distant, behind changes which linger
around him, dead cold.

- Save yourself at least! she whispers in her ear.
- Save yourself at least! she repeats simply.

He does not listen to her.
Fearful, he pushes her away,
unbinds her arms from his neck,
her whispering braces him: Why save just one
if we cannot all be saved! he wants to explain Karamazov to her.
He waves, and diminishing, tiny
leaves the hostel room with the jacket in his hands.

He is sad and heart-broken,
almost an enlarged prototype of an immature form,
an utterly new image of himself.

THE FOSSILS OF BERTRAND PALISSI

I cannot give up learning
for fossils are, indeed, a proof of the ancient biological
activity of the Earth:
a tree-trunk of the silificated tree,
prints of organic substance,
analysis of the hydrogen which reveals the missing groups
and all that repeats throughtime
leaves and returns.

The presence of gigantic reptiles indicates a relatively
mild climate.
The plants connote the same
because some families of herbs seek a warmer sea.
New animal species appear gradually
with time, while others disappear.
A stratographic level of the sea phaeacia can
hold and husband a good fauna of invertebrates.
Through them I approach the world,
its mists and gulfs, and apparently: I discover it.
I touch and touch: forominifers, radiolarians,
syculas of graptolite, conodonts, flagellates, pollens and spores,
some Devonian fish,
whole mammoths preserved in the quartal ice of Siberia -
these are signs denoting that the limit of existence
has been excended and that I was right.
And despite uncertainty, despite my coming death,
I am still an archaeoteryx,
the first animal ever to fly with feathered wings,
and if I dissolve during the great flight
no doubt: it is the history falling apart,
it is actually, the world returning to its origin.