RADOVAN PAVLOVSKI
b. 1937

Born in Nish, FR Yugoslavia. Poet, essayist and travelogue writer. Translated in over 50 languages. and included in various anthologies of Macedonian contemporary poetry.

THE YOUTH THAT SLEEPS AT NOON

The Sound of death
makes you sleep
Oh, youth
Wake up.

You have a field resounding of herbs and hoes
The morning sun is a large table
whereupon ploughmen break their bread
The noon hides black threads of the night
You have buried under you stones and moon.

Ten riders from ambush
fly closer like waves of fear
A tender herb ties your fingers
to the ground and does not let you go
until you gave
a dark kiss in the middle of the noon.

A chorus of dead lovers raises from the grass
Wake up oh, youth
My ship built of grapevine
with husky throat is at sea.

There is an hour when everything
is dead of a dream
There is an hour when I study myself
to see if I am mad.

It is evening
And many people come to wake you up
You draw the map of the stars
And breathe deeply
Wake up oh, youth
And tell us your dreams
And on a nice horse we shall come
to Zelezna Reka
The wind of the mills to refresh us
with a wounded blossom I button
the shirt of wind
and come home oh, love.

Tell me what do you drink in your dream
When you do not wake up oh, youth.

MESSAGE

If I die
carry me
on a litter of metaphors

Do not descend me anywhere
From the shore of one sea
To the shore of another sea

Let me rest
Let the distance weep

If I die
Do not close my eyes
Keep on loving
With blind insignificances

If I die
Do not take me dead to Reka
Bury me
In the pupil of the world.

MAJA

I

It was like a curse when I saw
the stars in daytime:
I was approaching you, my hands
full of darkness and speech,
like a vagrant I feared sleeping on roads
for the great ants would tear at my skin
but you lifted me in air
I perched in your tower like a bird
and my soul quenched the crowd's
thunder and lightning.
Then we chose a wide place, of flowers and bells.
I came there as a reaper, full of whistling,
you came full of fruit.
All round us were thieves' tracks.
We lost dawn through our fingers.
The crickets stored the beauty
of flowers against winter.

It was like a curse when I saw
the stars in daytime:
I was clearing a road to protect you
In the air were the cries of our children
I destroyed other good things
so I could see our pure treasure
with its fiery heart.
When you were coming I spread my arms
on the ground.
Proud bells shook the sky
scented with thyme.

II

Give back to the waters the blue stone
where grass flowers and tides are enclosed.
My heart ripened with the wheat.
In the afternoon the sun breathed life
into the sickness of the rooms
I set out the flower to breathe air
Heroes were struggling in the fields
Everywhere was the smell of war, invisible war
and then a wedding.
For Maja and I were born queen and king,
wed by tide, destroyed by rain.
A red fruit lit up the bed,
a shadow from the forest
lingered in the window.
It was the shadow that hid us
when we hid in the forest,
That was the time when the golden dogwood
blossoms fell on the snow;
that was the month of our love.
The moon like a black nun
wandered through tall flowers.
Where was the centre of things?
O Maja, dew and fire,
may the bread rise, the milk overflow
on the fire; it is useless. A ghost-actor
wanders lost on the roads.