Four Poems by Nikola Madzirov
Poems taken from the book
Remnants of Another Age (Bloodaxe Books, 2013)
Translated by Peggy Reid, Graham Reid, Magdalena Horvat & Adam Reed
*
I Don’t Know
Distant are all the houses I am dreaming of,
distant is the voice of my mother
calling me for dinner, but I run toward the fields of wheat.
We are distant like a ball that misses the goal
and goes toward the sky, we are alive
like a thermometer that is precise only when
we look at it.
The distant reality every day questions me
like an unknown traveler who wakes me up in the
middle of the journey
saying Is this the right bus?,
and I answer Yes, but I mean I don’t know,
I don’t know the cities of your grandparents
who want to leave behind all discovered diseases
and cures made of patience.
I dream of a house on the hill of our longings,
to watch how the waves of the sea draw
the cardiogram of our falls and loves,
how people believe so as not to sink
and step so as not to be forgotten.
Distant are all the huts where we hid from the storm
and from the pain of the does dying in front of the eyes of the hunters
who were more lonely than hungry.
The distant moment every day asks me
Is this the window? Is this the life? and I say
Yes, but I mean I don’t know, I don’t know if
birds will begin to speak, without uttering A sky.
Before We Were Born
The streets were asphalted
before we were born and all
the constellations were already formed.
The leaves were rotting
on the edge of the pavement,
the silver was tarnishing
on the workers’ skin,
someone’s bones were growing through
the length of the sleep.
Europe was uniting
before we were born and
a woman’s hair was spreading
calmly over the surface
of the sea.
The One Who Writes
You write. About the things that already exist.
And they say you fantasize.
You keep quiet. Like the sunken nets
of poachers. Like an angel
who knows what the night may bring.
And you travel. You forget,
so that you can come back.
You write and you don’t want to remember
the stone, the sea, the believers
sleeping with their hands apart.
Perfection Is Born
I want someone to tell me
about the messages in the water in our bodies,
about yesterday’s air
in telephone booths,
about flights postponed because of
poor visibility, despite
all the invisible angels on the calendars.
The fan that weeps for tropical winds,
the incense that smells best
as it vanishes—I want someone to tell me about these things.
I believe that when perfection is born
all forms and truths
crack like eggshells.
Only the sigh of gentle partings
can tear a cobweb apart
and the perfection of imagined lands
can postpone the secret
migration of souls.
And what can I do with my imperfect body:
I go and I return, go and return
like a plastic sandal on the waves
by the shore.
~
Macedonia’s Nikola Madzirov is one of the most powerful voices in contemporary European poetry. Born in a family of Balkan War refugees in Strumica in 1973, he grew up in the Soviet era in the former Republic of Yugoslavia ruled by Marshall Tito. When he was 18, the collapse of Yugoslavia prompted a shift in his sense of identity—as a writer reinventing himself in a country which felt new but was still nourished by deeply rooted historical traditions. The example and work of the great East European poets of the postwar period—Vasko Popa, Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert—were liberating influences on his writing and thinking. The German weekly magazine Der Spiegel compared the quality of his poetry to Tomas Tranströmer’s. There is a clear line from their generation, and that of more recent figures like Adam Zagajewski from Poland, to Nikola Madzirov, but Madzirov’s voice is a new 21st century voice in European poetry and he is one of the most outstanding figures of the post-Soviet generation.
Remnants of Another Age, his first book of poetry published in English, is introduced by Carolyn Forché, who writes: ‘Madzirov calls himself “an involuntary descendant of refugees”, referring to his family’s flight from the Balkan Wars a century ago: his surname derives from mazir or majir, meaning “people without a home”. The ideas of shelter and of homelessness, of nomadism, and spiritual transience serves as a palimpsest in these Remnants’—while Madzirov himself tells us in one of his poems, ‘History is the first border I have to cross.’
(This biography is taken from Nikola Madzirov’s Bloodaxe Books page.)
Sébastien Tahucatte is a Mauritian graphic professional who works as an illustrator and a graphic designer. Influenced by pop art, urban lifestyle, comics and numerous trips, this worldwide citizen initially intended to be a astrophysicist. Filled by his passion for drawing and illustration, Seba Labs—as he is known in the art industry—dreams of being a fulltime comic artist and believes that telling stories is one of the best profession in the world.
