Borce Panov

 

Borce Panov

 

Geometrical Cat

 

When the street is sleeping

a geometrical cat

is watching over the traffic in the dream

 

what we have in common is the light from the past

that comes to us as present time

and, yet the light is walking right now

on the paws of the future

 

the geometry of night

is touching us like a breath on the glass

and the insomnia writes over them

all the dreams that haven’t happened before

 

when the street is sleeping

a black cat passes by like a gigantic shadow

over the graphite

that says that only the awakened ones

don’t dream like automats 

 

 

House Spider Web

 

Have you ever thought

that the spider web spread in the house

is the most tender organ of your house,

that everything you mutter with the nightmare’s lips

it absorbs with the softness of the room’s angles

and because of it

the angles are not geometry of a finiteness anymore

that it spines your silence as well,

and the little spider that lives in it

will hunt your breathing from the ambush

with the sighs crucified among the walls.

 

Have you ever asked yourselves in the times

when all the rocks are falling apart of it

and are hovering around you like dreams

why it becomes a swallow

that unstoppably flies in the house

so it could remember all of the air entrances

to the nest of saliva and mud under the threshold.

 

Have you ever asked yourselves

why when the autumn shortens the day

a strange wind as warm path of air

raises your hands disembodied

before a long migration

with which the day starts to grow again

like lungs of a chained night...

 

 

Morse Code Of The Heart

 

Deep in the summer night,

a scent of the fresh bread touches me

bread in which God has baked the day

even before sunrise.

 

Deep in the night I listen to my heart

that has overtaken my body

and for a long time I read those upsetting telegrams

that connect

the dots and the dashes of the silence.

 

Long ago, since the umbilical cord

of a simple parental love,

I hear the distances

that make clicking sounds in my body.

 

Long ago, before the birth has happened,

of the muddy hands of God

I hear the distress of this world

and I know that I belong

only there where I can outlive myself

before the endless dash of the silence.

 

Deep in the summer night,

a scent of the fresh bread touches me

bread in which God has baked the day

even before sunrise.

 

BORCE PANOV

 

BORCE PANOV was born on September 27, 1961 in Radovish, The Republic of North Macedonia. He graduated from the ''Sts. Cyril and Methodius'' University of Skopje in Macedonian and South Slavic Languages (1986). He has been a member of the “Macedonian Writers’ Association” since 1998. He has published: a) poetry: “What did Charlie Ch. See from the Back Side of the Screen” (1991), “The Cyclone Eye” (1995), “Stop, Charlie” (2002), “The Tact” (2006), “The Riddle of Glass” (2008), “The Basilica of Writing” (2010), “Mystical Supper” (2012), “Vdah (The Breathe of Life)” (2014), “The Human Silences” (2016), “Uhania” (2017), “Shell” (2018); and several essays and plays: “The Fifth Season of the Year” (2000), “The Doppelgänger Town” (2011), “A Dead-end in the Middle of an Alley” (2002), “Homo Soapiens” (2004), “Catch the Sleep-walker” (2005), “Split from the Nose Down” (2006), and “The Summertime Cinema” (2007). He has also poetry books published in other languages: “Particles of Hematite” (2016 - in Macedonian and Bulgarian), “Vdah” (2017 – in Slovenian), “Balloon Shaving” (2018 – Serbian), and “Fotostiheza” (“Photopoesis, 2019 – Bulgarian). His poetry was published in a number of anthologies, literary magazines and journals both at home and abroad, and his works are translated into English, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, French, Catalonian, Mongolian, Uzbek, Albanian, Romanian, Polish, Italian, Arabic, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Danish language. Panov works as the Counselor for Culture and Education at the municipality of Radovish, and he is also Arts Coordinator for the “International Karamanov’s Poetry Festival”, held in Radovish annually. Poetry from Borce Panov translated from Macedonian into English by Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska: