PETRE M. ANDREEVSKI
b. 1934

Born in a village near Demir Hisar. Works for Skopje Television. Several volumes of poetry, several novels, some plays, some children's poetry. He has been translated into Serbo-Croat, Romanian and other languages. He translates from Serbo-Croat. Winner of several literary prizes.

HARVEST

Two armies are facing each other
neither yields

Each soldier on one side
grips a crescent moon
the others have nothing
nowhere to flee

Yet there are so many of them
their shadows are blending

Above them the sun's bee-hive
sings hymns to the summer
(The earth burns skyward
fetch the well in your jugs)

Two armies are battling
the smaller one is victorious

LOVE LETTERS
from a cycle FIVE LOVE LETTERS

I.

Nothing is more visible
and nothing is more present than your absence:
not the childish whispers which I discovered
in the crops of the rain,
nor the hint of storm in the cobwebs
in little roadside bars,
nor aerial paths lit up by swallows,
nor that which acquires shape only in my hearing,
nor my hearing while a belated cricket
winds up its nocturnal clock,
nor the birthpangs of the scattered seed,
nor the flaming fire on the cockerel's head
while it runs from the shade that descends from the sky,
nor the space which remains to me between your hands,
between your two hot suns,
nor the snake which ruffles the top of the corn,
nor the snowdrifts and hailstorms in poppy fields,
nor the flame which rises like autumn mist
in the fields of pepper,
nor the love and hatred between key and padlock,
nor the hidden light in a purchased match;
nothing is more visible than the trail you left
before me, behind me, with me and in me.

V.

And I sought you in textbooks, I sought you across the ages,
in the wind's ambushes, in winter's mortars,
in uncomprehended shame on the horizon before sunset,
in uncomprehended longing of a strand of tobacco
which twists and crumbles between the fingers,
in the displaced light of the blind and the dead,
in the equilibrium between past days and future nights,
in the captivity of souls of glass-blowers.
I sought you in the accents of unknown languages,
in the unsaddled evenings and empty beds in the field,
in the surprise primrose behind the herb-seller's ear,
in the punctuation in the speech of whining children.
I'm seeking you in the wild chance of unification
of my scattered nation,
in a stalk of sorrel, in the unused air
which annoyed and appeased the neighbouring villages,
by the anvils of hot and feminine afternoons,
among the fruit hastening towards its seasonal goal,
in the needle which sewed up darkness and light.
I sought you, listening for the underground drumbeat
that was the heart of sleeping harvesters.
I sought you beyond the sky, in heavenly molehills,
in the unread electric meter of an extinguished firefly,
in the assassination attempts by my people against my
people,
in the undistinguished constancy of the points of the
compass,
undistinguished, and understood as a constant waste of
time.
I sought you in the unfinished fear of the shooting star,
unable to reach anything in space.
I sought you, I'm seeking you in all and everything.
I sought you, and seeking you I might only have met you,
but not found you, no, not found you.