Maintenant #58: Nikola Madzirov
Most important to me is silence. Not any silence but the silence that does not follow the punctuation, nor the rhythm of breathing. I regard telling stories as an essential gene in transferring the cultural and intellectual heritage, which is not to be found in any testament. It is an urge risen from the fear of forgetting, which is greater than the fear of death. In the Balkans people like to tell long stories over the grave of the deceased, to build him/her a huge white marble tombstone onto which they would be able to inscribe a text as long as a newspaper column. Then everyone goes home with the words they would like to hear above their own tombstone. I discover poetry as a voice that belongs neither to the air nor to the blank paper, nor to the black ink of the pen or the printer. I like to retell, but not to report promises and testaments; I want to write, but not with my eyes or ears closed. As Jean Cocteau has put it: “The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.”
In the 58th in the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Macedonian poet Nikola Madzirov.
Five Poems
We’ll meet one day,
like a paper boat and
a watermelon that’s been cooling in the river.
The anxiety of the world will
be with us. Our palms
will eclipse the sun and we’ll
approach each other holding lanterns.
One day, the wind won’t
change direction.
The birch will send away leaves
into our shoes on the doorstep.
The wolves will come after
our innocence…
By Nikola Madzirov.