Lidija Dimkovska

EMPTINESS

translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and
Patricia Marsh-Stefanovska

The owner of the house
of glass and bricks has died.
In the yard stand forlorn
the helicopter under the tarpaulin,
the motorbike leaning on the fence,
the two hens curled up,
one here, one there,
and the rooster,
waking up only himself,
(emptiness, emptiness)
wondering
what he’s still doing here.

An image crosses his mind,
of street prostitutes
warming themselves by a fire
while the clients in cars
drive in circles round them
pushing hard on the gas pedal,
and he and the hens
fly above them towards death.
Emptiness, emptiness.
The owner didn’t get to cut his head off,
but the rooster can no longer feel
his own head.

LIDIJA DIMKOVSKA is a North Macedonian poet who lives in Slovenia. Widely translated, she has published seven books of poetry, three novels, and one short story collection. Among them are Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers, pH Neutral History, and A Spare Life, also in English.

LJUBICA ARSOVSKA is editor-in-chief of the long-established Skopje cultural magazine Kulturen Život and a distinguished literary translator between English and Macedonian. Her translations from into Macedonian include books by Isaiah Berlin, Toni Morrison, and Susan Sontag, and the plays of Lope De Vega, Harold Pinter, and Tennessee Williams. Her translations into English include works by Lidija Dimkovska, Dejan Dukovski, Tomislav Osmanli, Ilija Petrushevski, and Sotir Golabovski.

PATRICIA MARSH-STEFANOVSKA is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, author of The Scribe of the Soul and The Enigma of the Margate Shell Grotto, and translator of a number of plays and poems from Macedonian into English, including Goran Stefanovski: Five Plays (The Conrad Press, 2019). She lectured in English at the University of Skopje for a long period before returning to live and work in the UK in 1992.