Poems by Violeta Tancheva Zlateva 

BE MY ABEL
 
Be the Abel to my Cain-like soul
pleading to halt the day
when you’re no more
since the autumn mists befell
and covered your face
quenched the blaze within your eyes
and quaffed your voice’s
engulfing light which span and spined worlds afar
 
Be the Abel to my Cain-like body
wanting to bear life no more
on fragile shoulders
by this world’s wrongs shattered
Lift me so I too can raise it anew
where it ought to be
 
Be my Abel but don’t listen to me when I say:
“Let’s go out to the field,”
because envy marauds my heart
for all your days in which I am not
Glance away from your meek flock
and with a single deed bridge the void
take my hand and beyond the field
beyond reason and all that is unreal
deliver me
 
Maybe even God would shed some grace
and stop the flaming sword whirling at the Gate
 
Translated from Macedonian by Ana Avramovska
 
 
 
 
I AM NOT JUST…

Eve tempting you with earthly pleasures
a female for you to fertilize and impregnate
a fattened child bearer with a bloated belly
a mother in labour staggering to the delivery bed
a defective body that needs to be patched up
after having poured out the new life from itself
I am not just a nursing mother with painfully swollen breasts
puffy eyes sleep-deprived body and a saggy belly
I am not just a woman you drool over
until bedding her again
after she has fed you washed you and fitted you up

Damn it
I am neither a careerist, a flatterer nor a whore
hungry for success in a man’s world
My body and my feelings are not for sale
I am a human with a capital H
and a Mother to all the children of the world
that you are incapable of feeding
and leading on the right path

I am much more than what meets your eye
Much more than what you are
 
Translated from Macedonian by Paulina Jamakova Pejkova
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Violeta Tancheva Zlateva (1968) – poet and prose author. She has published eight poetry books and six prose books, including one novel for children. Her poetry has been published into numerous foreign languages. She has won the most significant poetry awards in Macedonia – Miladinov Brothers Award presented by Struga Poetry Evenings Festival (2015) and the Aco Shopov Award presented by the Macedonian Writers’ Association (2018). She is a member of the Macedonian Writers' Association.

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