Slobodanka Pavlova (Macedonia)

Slobodanka Pavlova (Macedonia)

Self-portrait of a Corinth column.

Echo of the silence.

Lifeless is the one whose shadow

is unreflectable  to mirrors,

whose voice wouldn’t answer back

as an echo in a mountain.

Dead-alive-invisible,

echo of the silence.

Around me faces resembling mine.

Sandstones speckled

with nine drops of eternity,

one for each new millennium.

From time to times,

the wind nurses my alphabet.

Only the wind,

only the wind,

only the wind

can have an invisible shadow,

and still be alive.

Endow the ancient city

with a funeral, not with an embrace.

Pull the voice of your father

through the cracks of the Corinth column

and drop by drop, letter by letter,

measure the life.

Forget about Alexander,

burry him in a match box, and put

the box in your pocket.

Over the ash, as a patient Phoenix,

heap your words with

the phonetics of the notes,

not with the syntax of column’s cracks.

No! Don’t puff the dust

out of my church altar,

built a new one over it, facing North.

build  a God over God,

and then,

Teach your  son

that the pain from  the past

should

never

never

never

be allowed to last-name the future.