PETAR BOSKOVSKI
b. 1936

Born in a village near Krusevo. Works for Skopje Radio, mainly on cultural, scientific, educational and documentary programmes. Several volumes of poetry. Co-author of anthologies. Has been translated into Serbo-Croat and Albanian. He translates from Serbo-Croat. Winner of several prizes.

BUTTERFLIES

Lightly they descend on the landscape,
the colourful butterflies of spring,
like tremulous sighs,
like blossom from heaven.

Innocently they settle on the greenery
which last year the merciless caterpillars
stripped down to sadness so it should give them
the wings for this year's beauty.

But now it gives you the right to flee
fiercely as if seized by madness,
and let no one ask
what's happened to your good sense.

SPRING IN THE FOREST

Something aroused me from a dream
and I went
to see my own eyes

As I bent over
a wild forest grew up
from them, touching the sun

Then I was seized by a fast current
of gentle falling,
demanding only my soul

From the topmost and softest air
I separated the purest water
and kissed its brow

Yet I don't know where it began
to tempt me into madness,
the silver restlessness of an undiscovered legend

But the first yellow leaf of the old forest
dropped to the ground before my eyes,
sending me back

Since then
that silver restlessness
has remained in my heart

And in my blood
ceaselessly teams
that undiscovered legend

And I no longer dream of the spring in the forest.

DRUM BEAT

You beat in our blood
you knit us tight
you let blood speak.

From an unknown age
you bring before us
a woman in black.

The healing pulse
of your voice
unbinds our souls' beauty
and the devil of black despair
is beaten swiftly down,
his gambit doomed
his fifes are caught up
in the spell of rich old wine.
New rebellions are in the waters.

Throughout the wedding is heard
the pulse of the dead's tread;
the bridegroom gives it room.

But what can we think to say
to that woman in black
who knows the veins of fire?

Inside our veins, the ache,
the sweet address of old hills,
the epiphany of sound is within us.

They will never die,
never,
these syllables of time.

FRESCO

On the left sidewall of the church in Glusino,
painted with talent and skill,
you'll see a small area left as a riddle:
a patch of bare plaster big enough for one more saint.

It's not that they didn't know what to do with that spot
or that there wasn't any money left for that small patch,
or that a quarrel had arisen about the orthodoxy of the
painting.
It must be a sign of some blind misadventure:
it was struck by a gang of bandits and cut-throats,
swamped by an army of unbelievers and dragged away,
struck by cholera or mown down by the plague...
It was something that kills the god in man,
but was not recorded by our impoverished ancestors.

The little church remained as it was then.
One might say that this isn't the work of a human hand,
that this spot of a slap in the face was not a place
where, thinking of its master craftsman, you should think
of a man.