BEFORE THE FLIGHT:

HOW CAN ONE TURN

INTO A STORK?

The storks have

White feathers and black wings.

They also have long legs,

Like the prettiest maidens.

They always return

To their old nest

And on a house with a stork nest on its roof

A magic spell can never be cast.

They come to our parts in spring

And bring to us joy and new hopes.

Each of us has at least once believed

That it's the storks that bring the babies.

Say, have you ever asked yourselves:

How can one turn into a stork?

I know that you know

That many philosophers are cowherds

And many cowherds have become philosophers,

But still, do you know

- How one can turn into a stork?

There are all kinds of wiles:

To dust something with powder from a stork's egg,

Or grind stork's egg-shells

In Kriva Vodenitsa

And play knucklebones for a while.

There's a whole dozen of answers.

If you don't believe it, then ask

Grandpa Marko Tsepenkov:

"Seek - and you'll find,

Knock - and the door will open,

Demand - and you'll be given,"

He had said once.

Don't ever forget one thing:

We are descendants of Silyan the Stork

And as long as we have feathers, we are storks.

By Jove, that's the way it will be!

This century is as nice as its vice.

For the stork knows the good storks

From the bad even while they are still small

And, standing on one leg, lonely

Keep click-clacking thankfully:

"May God forgive Grandpa Marko

For having written these things down

And saved them from our ancestors' times

To ours."

1.

Someone has said:

Dreams don't always come true

And you cannot escape your fate

So I, poor me, hadn't the luck

To become a pilgrim

(Silyan Bozhinoski the Pilgrim, from Konyari -

So eager to brag around!)

But to become a stork

And fly over seas and lakes

And click, and clack

And eat snakes, lizards and locusts

Until my ears turn deaf from this constant blabbering:

"Stork, stork, you long-legged quack

You know nothing except to click and clack!".

And it's not a bit easy

To write down

With a stork's feather

My real adventures

And travels.

And what I hear

From my son Velko:

Better a stork's feather

Than a hose full of water!

Is no comfort at all

And even if it is

It is as small,

As the nail of the little finger.

Hard times have come, my friend!

It was long ago that they used to say:

Better a grave

Than to be a slave!

They used to say

Other things too

And if I happen to recall any

I will tell them to you at once.

That is if you haven't had enough

And if you have nothing else to do

But listen to this click-clacking

And read about the daily happenings

Of an ordinary storked stork.

Well, may God give us health

And today, or tomorrow

My story will come to its end

As every river finds its mouth.

Surely, since you are learned people,

You probably already know

That my stork's memoirs

Are nothing but the truth

- From A to Z

And the other way round.

Perhaps it seems to you to be a lie

But to me, it is God's truth.

For not only have I been told all this

A long time ago

But I've also seen it with my very own eyes.

For in times of old, kids,

Our old people did not lie

As today both old

And young do.

Those times were different,

When God and the saints used to tread upon the earth

Whereas in these times

It's rather the devil does that.

Once upon a time, before the era of the Stork,

There was no click-clacking

But only chirping

Twittering and other like sounds:

Thus, Tweety and Chirpy

Brother and sister true-born by their mother

And cursed by their father

Were turned into a white bird and a black

And used to chirrup all day long:

Chirp-chirp, tweet-tweet!

They knew nothing else

But this semiliterate chirping.

Tweety: tweet, tweet, tweet!

Chirpy: chirp, chirp, chirp!

They were heard from far away,

Thus far, you see!

So Tweety and Chirpy were chirping

Preening in the scorching heat

And years were passing by like water under the bridge.

2.

Well, it was different

In the era of the Stork

Although, to tell the truth

We didn't even know when and how it began

(There was no television then

To tell us we had stepped

Into the happy future).

What can I say,

There were a whole lot of enchanted people

And a whole lot of dreams were dreamt then:

Both halt and lame, both blind and bald,

Both storks and non-storks

- All to the last man took part

In the Olympiad of dreaming

And to this day it is not clear

If there was a reality at all

Just as it is not clear whether today

Anyone dreams at all.

Freud and Jung, and the other

Interpreters of dreams

Suffered from chronic migraine

They were, as it's said, rather potty

And in the Prilep taverns

Drained wells of coffee without sugar

And unmeasured barrels of brine

But to no use: the whole thing

Came to nothing,

No beginning and no end,

No head and no tail.

They took off their lacquered shoes in vain

And greeted in Turkish manner

The Imam of Bitola.

He too knew nothing of dreams and reality

But knew that one shouldn't poke around too much

In Christian dreams

For a single dream

Could stir up two uprisings!

Either in dreams, or in reality

As if in a photograph,

As the rainbow appears

When a bear is getting married,

Elim appears

"Famous for its wealth,

Its silver and its gold.

An there is a temple in it

Which is very rich."

And in this temple, there are "things of gold

Armour and weapons,

Left by Alexander

The son of Philip, the Macedonian emperor,

Who first ruled over Egypt".

Odysseus and Paris stop their game of chess

And sit down to finish the reading of Moses' writing

They spread out a dozen maps

To find an easier way

To reach the Golden Fleece

They may either find it, or may not.

And I, a stork unfinished,

Have learned history from mistakes

And geography from pain.

All that I saw with my own eyes,

Arose from pain

Was wrapped in pain

And covered by pain:

Banitsa, Bansko, Beaz Kule,

Bistritsa, Bregalnitsa, Brezovo,

Belchishta, Vatasha, Vodocha,

Galichnik, Gramos, Dabnitsa,

Dede Agaç, Gyavato, Edi Kule,

Edirne, El Tepe, Zagorichani,

Kadino Selo, Karadak, Karaorman,

Klenoets, Klisura, Kukush,

Kumanovo, Kresna, Krushevo,

Leshok, Lopushnik, Mariovo,

Ohrid, Pelister, Pirin,

Prespa, Prilep, Razlog,

Rozhen, Salonica, Fushtani,

And even Vienna, Milan and Moscow,

Odessa, Saint Petersburg, Sofia, Istanbul,

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Which is the last map

In the Macedonian atlas of pain

And which is the last letter

In our script of rage?

Burdened by such questions

I was not astonished when I saw

Blood and tar in front of the gates of Elim

Just like in the ancient tragedies

Just like in the zone of the gods:

Herds, mills, weddings, funerals

Hunts, murders, raped women.

And I saw a foal, as white as snow,

Constantly weeping and weeping

As the mother weeps and mourns

And at night gazes at the sky

And looks for

The Sun.

Later I found that its name was Buchefalus.

3.

There was nothing left for me to do

So I, Silyan, fondled and spoiled,

Flew over the White Sea and the Black

And came back to Prilep again

For it was nice in my old town

To go to the open market

Eat hot loaves and halvah

And relish sweet Turkish delight.

Lucky are the Prilep folks

To have such a market -

Packed with all kinds of fruit and vegetables,

And other things:

Tomatoes, green and red peppers, potatoes,

Beans, lentils, rice,

Apples, peas, plums, medlars,

Water-melons, melons, figs,

Oranges, mandarins, lemons

And certainly,

Bananas imported from Ecuador.

And on top of all this: walnuts, almonds, hazel-nuts, peanuts,

Hard cheese from Mariovo, curds, and cheddar too,

Bukovets red pepper, spices, oregano, tea,

Mushrooms, handfuls of sweet basil and camomile.

May God preserve and bless all this abundance -

You'd wear out your shoes even if they were iron

While you pass by and see all the stands

And walk home with bags full of foodstuff!

Half of Turkey, and all of Bulgaria

All the neighbouring smugglers

Had spread their goods on the Prilep stalls:

Drawers and panties, with or without lace,

Brassieres and tights,

T-shirts, jeans, Bermuda shorts,

Soaps, lavender, washing powder,

Shampoos, tooth-pastes and shaving creams,

Blades and electric razors,

Batteries of all voltages, bulbs,

Pincers, screwdrivers, bolts,

Drills, files, chain-saws,

TV dishes, tape-recorders, dictaphones,

Video and audio cassettes, computer diskettes,

You can list these until tomorrow morning,

But you'll scarcely manage to name half of them!

Prince Marko was greatly astonished, too

At the sight of the market.

Dressed in original Levi blue jeans,

He was explaining something

(in English with a Prilep accent)

To the lady from America, a Protestant,

Like that Miss Stone from the biography

Of Yane Sandanski and Mandana,

Who had come on a goodwill mission.

Many such missions were carried out

In Macedonia before the start

Of the Third Balkan War.

If you have nothing else to do

Then try hard and explain

That our history is not short of wars

And our life - of graves.

But something else was troubling Prince Marko's mind:

Ecstasy and dizziness had come upon him

And it wasn't the first time he flew to the seventh heaven

And fell head over heels in love with the American

Who turned his head with her big boobs

And maybe even more with her stories about cosmonauts

And flying to the Moon.

So Prince Marko did not know

Which he wanted more: to knock up the American

Or, instead of his fur hat, stick a space helmet on his head

And become the first Macedonian cosmonaut.

The sun burned my skin

While I was staring at the market stalls

Especially at Prince Marko and the American girl

(A market-stare is a market-stare, your eyes are full but your hands - empty)

And swarms of flies landed

On the heaps of dung

(It's not in vain they say

Frankfurt-am-Main

And Prilep-on-Shit)

So I told myself, Silyan, go away

Leave alone Prince Marko

And the American peddlar girl

(They probably don't know the song:

Those who love each other, do not stay together)

And leave alone the man who has pinned

Decorations on his chest

And yearns for the May Day parades.

If you can't butt into other people's business,

And can't have a finger in every pie,

Then at least at the Brsyaks' café, you can

Eat sweetmeats and Bosphorus halvah.

And Bozhin, my father, from Konyari

Had better not show off

With curses and other threats

Sent to my address!

Who does he think he is to preach to me and scold me!

I'd rather cut off my nose to spite his face!

4.

Amusement for the urban population!

Many tradesmen, revolutionaries,

Palmists, tumblers, jugglers,

Magicians, clowns and other rascals

Were staying at the inn near the Prilep promenade

Called "Linden" in honour of the first lime tree

Planted in the town:

They drank cold beer,

And had fun on their own.

The town theatre was, as usual,

In a phase of renovation,

And this was where the field

For cultural competition

Of the tobacco producers and other Prilep folks

Had been moved to as well.

First of all, there was music

- Fiddles and timbrels, a whole bunch

And they played one moment merrily, the next - plaintively,

There was a little for everyone.

And even when they didn't play, the people still sang:

I will die for your red tie,

Hey, Macedonia, pearl of the Balkans!

You may not believe it

But this was true:

Marko Tsepenkov didn't know the new songs

And in the breaks, was first to run to the jukebox

And play his songs:

Sick he lies in bed, Georgie the Wicked,

Or Kolyo was a poor man

And then, sip from his hip flask

Which he had brought with him from home,

And after this, he used to go out

Under the biggest lime tree -

To catch some fresh air

So that some fledgling

Wouldn't see his tears behind the thick glasses.

As it is said: do all that you can,

To keep the dog away from the butchers' -

For although it's a dog, without too much brains,

It won't drop the bone

Let alone me, who have brains and a sound mind

And won't give up the good life in Prilep

And go back to Konyari.

No can do!

Otherwise, how would I have seen Chernodrinski

Not in the pictures, but in the flesh,

As I see you now, from only two metres away

Or felt his concern and consolation,

Or sworn at Osman

When he stole Tsveta away?

Thanks to the One who's in heaven

And a little bit to the One who is down here

(In our parts Upper can't exist without Lower,

That's why we have Upper and Lower Dupeni

Upper and Lower Vranovtsi

And uptown and downtown in every city and town)

So that I stayed under the lime trees,

To run and jump,

Jump and play

To turn into a Prilep coxcomb,

Cheat doctors and sorcerers,

Thrum all day on the timbrel,

Wear bright new clothes,

Eat mixed candies

And drink cold beer!

And when you eat, and when you drink

You will surely get drunk

And you'll forget everything -

What is yours, and what is not.

This is what we've always been like

When we used to sing From the Vardar to Berlin,

And now, when we are painted with different colours

Poor us!

The old song can be sung in a new voice

But you don't know if it's a song or a lament:

The cuckoo sits on a beech tree

The nightingale sings that Silyan should live!

You don't say so!

There in the corner Georgie Sugarev

Rolls a cigarette

And feigns following the play in the inn

Constantly wondering:

Is the traitor

Of my traitor

My traitor as well?

There were seven against Thebes -

Georgie Sugarev recalls -

How many were those who aimed

And still aim at Macedonia?

The next morning Georgie Sugarev

Passed by the Cairn of the Undefeated

Right when the school-bus

Full of pupils stopped -

Eteocles and Polinices

Dressed in uniform clothes

Were first to get off the bus.

5.

The Priest who had been to Christ's grave

And had come to beg for alms

In the Prilep vilayet and others

Climbed on the chair

And stammered about his nightmare

And his passions.

He put the trivet on the table upside-down,

He put the cauldron bottom up,

He turned over the lid,

He put the sieve to sift the flour the wrong way up as well.

His magic didn't work as it was meant to

But the Priest from Christ's grave was persistent:

"Those of you who have ears to hear, hear -

Woe unto you, you lawgivers,

For burdening the people

With heavy burdens to bear,

While you yourselves don't want

To lift even a finger."

The Priest singled me out, looked me straight in the eye

And went on amazingly,

Scoldingly but sweetly:

"Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil;

Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline

After many

To wrest judgement".

After this he said something about some

Floods of disorder,

Clouds of cruelty,

And chains of hell,

And I also heard

That the dog always returns to its puke.

When his nose started dripping

Doubt appeared amidst the Prilep tradesfolk

Who were sitting in the inn, smoking tobacco

And listened to the Priest's stories.

This was either a Priest,

Or a young gentleman, a braggart from Salonica!

You'd better keep your wailings to yourself! -

Grumbled the tinker.

But the Priest was skilled

In holding meetings and speeches

And didn't give a damn about this grumbling and mumbling.

The knaves from our ranks

Could not embarrass him so easily.

He sniffed a little,

And wiped his nose a little:

May God help all those

Who are last to understand and first to forget, he said

And I am telling you that

"A kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation;

And every city or house divided

Against itself, shall not stand"

Keep your wits about you and follow the Teacher

Who once said that our language is

The Kingdom, our motherland

Which unites us all

"The tongue is a little flame

But kindles a great fire"

I'm sick and tired of mudslingers and slanderers

It's not brother against brother, but brother for brother! -

The Priest rebuked

(I said to myself: it's well said

"Don't muzzle the ox when it's threshing")

However, he calmed down immediately

And said that God had brought him here,

For "it had pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia

To make a certain contribution

For the poor saints which are at Jerusalem".

You should know this - and you surely do, -

The Priest said, and knowing it,

Should act upon it.

An eagle brought a message

About the Priest's tales

To Prince Marko

Who was showing Prilep to the American in a mini-skirt

From the terrace of the monastery of Treskavets.

6.

Luckily the Priest from Christ's grave

Was in our vilayet for the first time

And in Macedonia too

And somehow I made him

Take me as his guide.

Although I hadn't taken

A course for tourist guides

I did this job perfectly

For I was very fond

Of strolling and roaming

And I would have done anything

Just to be as far as one can be from my Konyari.

I will be a loyal friend to you,

I said to the Priest,

I only wish for sunshine and no cold,

And protected by God we will go

To beg for alms together

Throughout the Prilep vilayet and others.

And, God save us from spells,

I can help you

When you're in need.

Let us now collect our new clothes and the old

And put on new shoes.

Let us take a flask for each of us

To carry water

Or maybe even wine

And set off on foot

And let anyone dare to stop us on the road

If they are not afraid.

At the very time

There was a pipers' contest in Dolneni

And a big fair.

Pipes were shrieking, fifes and drums were blaring

little drums, kettledrums, snare drums,

Turkish drums, shepherd's flutes and tambourines.

Small meatballs were grilled

And they were selling plastic sausages

They called hot dogs on the stalls

Imported pop-corn and overbaked potatoes

Called crisps

Pumpkin seeds, peanuts, sesame sticks

Ray-Ban glasses were on sale too

And a whole lot of toys

And other rattles and gadgets.

You watch pictures, you grow fast -

An old man cried

And for a dime, let the children

Peep through a hole at something:

Look, this is Rome, where the Pope

Makes speeches every Sunday,

And this is Leningrad, oh I apologize,

Saint Petersburg,

And this is Moscow, with no apology,

And this is Paris, the Eiffel Tower!

Kali... Kaleidoscope... or something like that

The thing was called, I'll get my tongue around it

In the end.

I only know it had a bit of Skopje in its name:

It probably came from there.

The Priest, as God had made him

Fond of talks and speeches,

Climbed on to the platform

And yelled like a rustic town-crier:

Brothers and sisters, bla, bla, bla -

As only he could do.

However, he started to beat about the bush

Just enough to get everybody bored

And they all began to yell: boo, boo,

No more speeches, we want pipes

No more politics, we want songs and dance!

I thought I would sink through the floor,

And as I explained to these rascals

That the man was a Priest and as such

Had nothing to do with politics,

We were deep in trouble.

You could try to explain three days and nights

Nobody believes anybody here

That they don't care about politics -

It would sound as if

They don't care about life or religion.

Such is the fate that has befallen my people.

Mercy, people, for God's sake - I'd hardly got it out

When a ripe apple-shaped tomato flew

Towards the Priest and hit him

Where it shouldn't have, at the male spot

And he, with nothing else to do, astonished,

Did a bunk, head over heels

Right to the other end of the village

(Those who have been to Dolneni

Know how far that is).

As has been said, every dark cloud has a silver lining

For the Priest wouldn't have thought of the wise saying

That he has repeated ever since:

"You should listen to the drum from afar,

For thus it sounds much better."

Under the hill, where we took some rest,

A real whore reached us,

So revolting you'd avoid her like the plague.

She had tons of makeup on her eyes

And birds' nests in her unkempt hair.

She said she knew many tricks

And could heal the Priest's tool

So that it could be hard as a corncob,

Like a keystone of a monastery arch.

The Priest went nuts, was astounded and dumbfounded

But I knew what was to be done -

Shoo, you plucked hen, you scabby frog!

For I have called the shots

Of many whores before!

After this scandal was somehow over,

We opened our flasks,

Swilled out our mouths

And left.

Behind the hill was another world

No pipes, no kettledrums, no whores

And everything was as lifeless

As high noon in the Westerns.

(If we leave out the wandering Gypsies

And their bears with rings in their noses

That are all, bar none, called Bozhana

And those two people

Who'd strayed into the swamps

To hunt for wild ducks

For who we learned afterwards in other villages

Were Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

And for years they'd been spending their summers

Here, hunting for wild duck

And, in passing, measuring the speed

Of the Pelagonian winds.

Had we known all this, we'd've taken a picture

Of ourselves together with them

To have it as a keepsake afterwards

And show it to our future generations.)

Thus, we crossed many dry streams and rivers,

Worn-out, weedy fields,

With barley slashed to the ground,

Dried-up mushrooms without rain,

Blown-away dandelions,

Barren brambles, raspberries and wild strawberries,

Rose hips - not boiled but dried,

And crushed onion leaves.

We fended off beetles, wasps and gnats,

Owls, magpies and blackbirds,

Vipers, snakes and lizards.

We saw scruffy bushes,

Desecrated scarecrows,

We heard muffled cowbells.

Great fear and the runs

Had befallen the people

Who on their battery tape-recorders

Played only rain songs

And couldn't find out

Who in the hell had sent them

The drought as a guest

And who'd be brave enough

To chase the drought away

From benighted Macedonia.

7.

As has been noted already,

"The Macedonians, despite

Their terrible poverty,

Showed great good-heartedness"

And gave willingly even more than they could

So I and the Priest did not go on our pilgrimage

With empty hands.

I begged the Priest so much

To give a hoot, do a good deed

And take me with him to Christ's grave

And then - may God be willing!

It was hard to win him over

But, finally, we found ourselves

In the port of Salonica

Waiting for a vessel to Jerusalem

And it's not in vain they say Salonica towers.

What houses, beautiful palaces

They swept me off my feet!

High buildings,

All higher than the Prilep tobacco factory!

Miraculous gardens with rose-beds

And other most beautiful blooms

As if an angel sits at my shoulder

And I gaze and gaze to see

How far the White Sea stretches!

Somewhat out of fear before we boarded the ship

And somewhat out of sorrow that thus had ended

The Slavonic siege of Salonica

And many of our people left their bones here

In the tavern near Beaz Kule

We drank several glasses of strong Salonica brandy

Munched the olives together with their pits.

Two or three tables away

Grigor Prlichev seemed to be sitting -

The man looked so much like our Homer

Although his hair and moustache were gray.

He had ordered ice-cream,

Big scoops, like Ohrid apples,

And was doing his crossword

And when he glared at the sea

It looked as if he measured the grief of all Macedonians

It looked as if he listened to their pulse

It looked as if he searched for his ancestral roots

And recognized the scent of the new time.

He felt I rejoiced in him

And waved with a white cloth

When, afterwards, I looked at him from the ship.

Prlichev's cloth is to the present day

My most beautiful flag,

The flag of all my fancies and longings.

Before we boarded the ship

The Priest showed me

Another, much bigger, tavern

With billiards, dominoes, checkers on the tables

Only our people come to this pub, he said -

Anarchists, socialists, autonomists,

Federalists and other -ists, -ists, -ists

But it was getting dark

And I could not recognize anyone.

Our ship left port when it was pitch dark

In the port of Salonica

We were still on our feet

When we heard loud shooting

Coming from the tavern of our fellow country-men

It was the second assassination attempt on Yane Sandanski.

This was my first time on a vessel

And danger looks larger through the eyes of fear

Out of dread and unrest

To tell you the truth -

I spent the first night in the loo

And through a small round porthole

I counted the stars

And then I had a vision:

A lonely naked maiden dancing on the waves.

I was quiet as a mouse

That night on the ship.

Well, many days and nights had passed

When suddenly demons from the east and north

And strong winds took their turns

The youngest cyclops grew angry,

I think it was called Argos -

They had spoiled its nap after the feast

And it raged, rampaged and stormed,

Hurled great stones and rocks into the sea.

Our ship stumbled

Like a nutshell on the waves,

The demons swished, may God swish them

The cyclops went wild, may wild boars eat it!

The vision disappeared in a second

The naked girl dancing on the waves vanished

The ship keeled over and went down

Holy Moses, my dear mother,

Should I, your Silyan, fondled and spoiled

Be a bite for the fish?!

The girl who had danced upon the waves

Was in fact a plank

That I gripped tightly

And almost broke with my arms

I and she - grandchildren of Tantalus.

When I woke up,

Thank God,

I was already on shore

With the plank in my grasp.

If I had had a radio, Hey you Macedonian,

I could have heard that in some other sea

That great ship the Titanic had gone down

And in the Balkans there were wars, wars

Festering wounds

And Macedonia's division had begun.

This is how I stepped into the era of the Stork

With a plank and no radio-news.

8.

I was on shore,

Alone with the plank on an island.

As was the custom

And as God had said it should be,

I crossed myself and said to God:

Thank you for saving me

From drowning in the sea

As all the others did.

As I opened my eyes

I felt heartily depressed

For it seemed to me I was thrown up on a wasteland

At the back of beyond

And I said to myself: farewell Konyari, farewell Prilep

There's no help or salvation for me,

The day has come to pay for all my sins.

I was doomed to be

The first Macedonian Crusoe

Just as we have our first Macedonian bank,

First Macedonian stamp

And even the first Macedonian prisoner!

For it is said, God makes the blind bird's nest

And so He helped me

To find a cave on the island

And near the cave a spring

And by the spring ripe fruits -

Hazelnuts, almonds and sweet apples,

Sorrel, brambles and wild berries.

In great hunger one can even try

Pine-cones, wood and stones.

Will I spend my whole life on this lonely island?

I wondered, and started off through the shrubs,

I waded through mire and sludge

Who knows for how long

(I kept my wristwatch, an Omicron model,

Simply as a souvenir -

It was out of order, the saltwater had turned it

Into a real saltshaker.)

I waded and spoke to the butterflies

And watched out for snakes and lizards.

The scratches from the shrubs did not hurt as much,

As the pain in my soul.

In case you didn't know, there are no public toilets

On desert islands, a dime for a pee and that's it,

In the fields a snake might bite your arse -

Excuse my language -

And you must be very careful when you get the runs.

I'm telling you this so that you'll know

If ever, God forbid, you land up on such an island.

I waded slowly and sadly,

And bitterly passed through the hellebores

When I saw a great wonder

And, although it was sunset, it dawned upon me

As it never had before

Because of what I saw:

A man and a woman were mowing a meadow,

They were mowing and talking -

It wasn't proper to their age

To pinch each other like that!

I almost died of shock,

There is a God, said I to myself,

And ran to them as if blind

To see if they were real or merely apparitions.

They seemed to be of our kind,

Warm-hearted and welcoming:

What luck has brought you,

Dear son Silyan, to our land

Where no man has ever come before?

Is this real or I am dreaming

They know my name, and speak our tongue!

I was astonished,

And couldn't say a word -

This can't be seen either in stories,

Or in the films, where lying is allowed!

My poor Konyarian pate could not take in the sight

And the man shook my hand:

Welcome, he said, to the land

Of the stork-people.

It is getting dark

And we'll go to my house,

Where you will be my guest,

And there we'll explain it all to you.

Long is our story,

My dear son Silyan.

Indeed, from A to Z,

All that I'm telling you is true -

I saw it with my very own eyes.

9.

My dear son, Silyan,

I am your destiny and they call me

Click-clack the Pilgrim,

As you have your chieftains

I am the chieftain here

And as is fit for a chieftain

I keep a diary and write memoirs.

I line up the genealogy of storks

And to you I will tell it in short:

One can never know how many times

We have flown around the world

Even before the cosmonauts were born

And since we had no appliances,

Computers or other resources

We remembered everything we saw

And we remembered you, too

For we had been to Konyari, your village,

Even before you were born

We lived on the roof of your house

And in your field

And we know everything you have in the house

Even better than you.

Silyan, we turn into storks,

And come to your village

And your parts

And why we turn into storks,

Is because of our grandfather's curse:

"May it please God

To send you terrible measles,

And take you all,

So that none of you have a descendent,

Born here, ever,

But your mother and father

Swim across the white seas and the black

And bear their children there!"

Thank God that He isn't so evil

And told our ancestors

In which well to take a bath

And turn into storks,

To fly over the white seas and the black

And there bear and raise their children

Come back here again

And bathe in another well

Turn into people again

But live as people only on the island.

We have been doing this for thousands of years

And we will do it, as long as this world lasts.

Tomorrow is our holiday, the Storks Day.

We celebrate it for three days.

There will be feasting, pipes and drums

There will be a stately parade of storks

There will be tournaments in many sports

And a ceremonial hunt for frogs and worms.

You, Silyan, will be our guest of honour,

You will sit next to me, on the platform

And therefore, son, take a shower

And go to bed earlier, have a good rest.

(There's nothing interesting on TV anyway

And you can watch the satellite broadcast

Of the election campaign in your country tomorrow

Although you already know what a cutting tongue you all have).

And as for getting home

We will find a way, don't worry -

When the time comes to return

You will bathe and turn into a stork,

You will take a bottle of water from the other well

And hang it round your neck

When we arrive in Konyari

You will pour it over yourself, turn into a man again

As you now are, safe and sound.

10.

Many days and months had passed

And the time came to return.

I bathed in the Stork's well

And turned into a stork.

I filled a bottle with human water

And hung it round my neck

And together with Click-clack the Pilgrim

And his large stork squadron

We flew back to our parts.

Since I hadn't flown before

I stuck close to Click-clack the Pilgrim

Like a suckling to its mother.

We flew and flew,

God knows for how long.

The first rest we had

Was after twenty-four hours of flight

Which was the first contribution

Of the storks from Macedonia

To its introduction into the era of the cosmonauts -

For even today

The storks with steel wings

Called aeroplanes and airships

With bills, wings and behinds

Painted in various colours

And all this in Latin letters

(Lufthansa, Air France, American Airlines,

Palair Macedonia, Macedonian Airlines)

Can't fly for more than seven or eight hours

Without pouring into their bills

Large cauldrons of broth from Arabia.

We had one or two more landings on our way

Just to regain strength with some little frog or worm

And finally we found ourselves

In the Prilep vilayet.

From the Pletvar Gorge

I first saw my homestead

With my small stork's eyes

From high above, from a bird's eye view,

Out of great joy and excitement

I stopped waving my wings

And landed near some large rocks

To douse myself with human water.

But since I am a true-born jinx

I was careless with the bottle

And this is exactly what happened then:

The bottle smashed to smithereens

And I just moaned,

And gathered the grief of all the world within me -

I am a stork and I'll die as one.

As the old folks say:

Bad luck does great damage.

No one but me was to blame.

I only waved two or three times

With my left wing to Sisyphus

We became blood brothers on the rocks of Pletvar

And I was probably the first stork Sisyphus

The first Sisyphus among the fliers.

My well-wisher Click-clack the Pilgrim

Found a word of comfort again -

When one door shuts

Another door opens -

And slowly we flew off

for Konyari, I storked alive

To show up before my kith and kin.

Have you ever seen a stork cry?

It's a very sad sight,

Like in the poems of Koneski,

I'm speaking from my own experience

For I was that weeping stork

When I saw our house

in Konyari.

And the house was very rich

With a high terrace

And a barn next to it,

A fold, stables, a pigsty,

A garden for bee-hives, and a vegetable plot

A barn for wheat, baskets for corn,

A threshing floor and a dung heap.

The hens in the yard were cackling,

And turtle-doves were cooing on the roof.

Oh, how sad and how hard it is

To be a stork in your own house,

To be a stork for six months

And you're the only one that knows it,

To love your nearest and cry

While they chase you with sticks and clubs.

My son Velko, my dear child,

Once hit me with a stick upon my head,

The bitch Lisa bit a piece of my rump,

My father Bozhin broke my right leg with a club 'cause I walked

behind him picking worms while he ploughed the field.

May God forgive them all,

For they didn't know that their Silyan

Could turn into a stork.

Only Neda, my poor mistress,

Didn't bother me at all, but felt sorry for me

And it wasn't strange at all that once I felt

Like sticking my bill in her breast

And stroking her in the stork's manner:

Then I let out a wondrous shriek

And really felt how magic is

The stork's cry of love.

Click-clack the Pilgrim was a learned stork

And great admirer of art

(Besides his diary and memoirs

He also composed poems, for his own delight)

And on St. Peter's Day

He took us to Ohrid

Not to mix with the lake swimmers

But to listen to

The Macedonian Philharmonic

At the opening of the Ohrid Summer Festival.

(This wasn't like in Dolneni -

The band was a large one

And played songs that I didn't know

And those who were sitting on the chairs and listening

Pretended to be greatly fascinated

And didn't nibble pumpkin seed, or lick toffee apples,

For, God forbid, that would be a shame!)

Anyhow, three weeks after the opening

Of the Ohrid Summer Festival, at the threshing season

Real pipes from Dolneni started playing

In our house so loud

That even the soot from the ceiling started to fall down:

The wedding-day of my sister Bosilka

I spent it as a stork

With no folk dances, brandy or wine for me -

They were singing, I was crying,

They were dancing, I was mourning.

It almost broke my heart

And I'll regret not being there until my death.

Thank Goodness, St. Panteleimon's Day soon came

And Click-clack the Pilgrim our chieftain

Sent word

To the storks in all the country to gather

And go back to the storks' island -

That summer we didn't wait

For the smoke from the stills with brandy

And the pots with minced peppers.

11.

Many dawns and sunsets

And a year had passed

On the island of the storks

When before Easter

Click-clack the Pilgrim

Gave a sign

That everyone should bathe

In the Stork's well

And again fly over

The seven seas

And seven mountains

To our parts and some others.

With a scoop, and not a bottle round my neck

I took a flight

Again

To try my luck.

On our way there was

A great battle

With a flock of eagles

And blood up to the knees

And Click-clack the Pilgrim

Decided

That we fly over

All of Macedonia

(For the young storks

To know it better

So that they love it more)

And that the last stop

Be

The Prilep vilayet.

I was very happy about this

(For I feared that I might break

The scoop with human water)

But it is said

Where all the Turks go

Hassan too will go.

I had not

Visited all of Macedonia for a long time

Ever since my school days

When they took us on a trip.

What I saw -

I will tell you right away.

You see, high prices and hunger

Have ruled in our country,

The time of darkness has begun,

Pensioners standing in lines

Dying in front of post offices

And waiting for their pensions, wonder:

How much really,

Can a people endure?

The same question is asked

By villagers, workers,

And learned men.

To look for justice

Is to roam

(With a torch)

On the far side of history.

It has always been like this,

When the cat's away

The mice will play.

However,

I also saw satellite dishes

Interphones and intercoms

In towns and villages,

I saw discotheques

Blaring until the small hours,

I saw a whole lot of brand new cars,

Grocers and businessmen with golden necklaces

About their necks and bracelets on their wrists

With pure-bred dogs they'll kill

If they pee on

The back sits of their cars.

I saw hicks in bath chairs

Boors in lacquered shoes

Drinking whiskey on the rocks - this is certainly so

I also saw tenderfoot hunters

Of pheasant, moufflons and game

And nude Russian girls in the taverns

(Dancers in transition)

And what is worst of all,

I saw brothers falling out,

Constantly fighting with each other

As if they had forgotten

That God created men

To live together as brothers,

And not to fret each other,

Hate each other,

Look daggers at each other

As they do.

I saw many turncoats and cowards

With enough brains to pick pears

(But the fields are destroyed by drought

And there isn't a pear for all the tea in China).

I saw how everybody shouted each other down

In the squares

About who loved Macedonia more -

And there was no wise man to stop this

I felt like flapping my wings

A hundred times

People, have mercy

Chase away the evil from our tongues

And from our souls!

I also saw goats

Gnawing the trees

And chain-saws

Felling beeches and oaks

And groves ablaze

And hares fleeing the fire

And ruined nests of swallows

And sewers flowing

(There are no more ditches;

The mills still exist, but only in our memories)

And spittle

And rolls of fat

On the Ohrid's beaches

If I am not mistaken

I think I also saw

Dante Alighieri

In the crowd of foreign journalists

In the snack-bars

Of the old Skopje bazaar

But my mind was set

On the brothers who'd fallen out

Let's hope we are not a people

Cursed to hate forever

I said to comfort myself

And not that I do not know why

While I flew over

The Ohrid sunset

I constantly thought

Of the twilight of civilisation,

And I flew and wondered,

Flew and wondered,

I lost my mind!

To cut it short,

For I've bothered you long enough

With my adventures and experiences...

I learned enough last year

And now I've landed in my father's yard

Right on the barn.

I've scooped up water from the scoop

And I am again

Silyan Bozhinovski from Konyari

With no wings or bill.

As soon as I entered the house

I kissed my father's hand

And asked him for forgiveness

For the curse that had fallen upon me.

Straightway the house was full of guests

All the village of Konyari was gathered

They looked on me as at a freak

And listened to my story

That I have been telling you now

First they thought I was crazy

(Who is such a fool as to believe you,

Silyan, that you have been a stork)

But after I told them in order

About last year's adventures

(How Velko hit me with his stick

And how my father broke my leg with a goad

And the other things I saw)

They all began to believe and said

Dear God, to turn

A man into a Stork!

Many cakes were eaten

Much brandy and wine was drunk

Many signs were made

Beyond any measure

Many feasts were held

For my home-coming

Now, with Click-clack the Pilgrim, the chieftain,

We drink coffee every morning

And discuss politics

As everybody does.

St. Panteleimon's Day is near

And Click-clack the Pilgrim

Before he gathered his

Stork squadron

Stroked me with his bill

As my father had never done

And said:

As you see, my dear Silyan,

No one is a stork for life

And there is no wall that can't be knocked down by a head.

Had we had no dreams, we'd have no reality either

And had we had no reality, we wouldn't have had our dreams.

He plucked out a feather

And asked me, when I went to Prilep,

To give it to grandpa Marko Tsepenkov -

And wish him good health and many more meetings.

AFTER THE FLIGHT:

TSEPENKOV'S BLESSING

I can see,

I can damn well see

With these glasses of mine!

I see my stork

Waving his wings

And bless the feathers

That have written down

The new happenings

And stories of his life.

For it used to be mostly the kids

That rejoiced in my Silyan,

But now the times are different,

The kids have grown up,

And tomorrow their kids will grow up as well.

"May they all be blessed

And be wise and sage,

May angels sit on their shoulders

And guard them from all evil!

I wish them good health!

Good thoughts!

Peace and love!

May God preserve our harvest

And bless our fields!

Good health to the cattle!

May all the saints help, too!

May we have brotherly love,

Confusion to our foes,

May they drag along the ground,

Cross bridges with their bellies scraping the earth,

Run far away from here

And never come back again;

May they go to the Holy Land

And stay there forever!

May God give us

Brotherly love and good thoughts!

Good old age

And nice days!

May God forgive our Christian souls!

God bless them all!"

Macedonian Cultural and Historical Resource Center
Last Modified: February 21, 1997

Created and Maintained by: Macedonia FAQ Development Team Copyright © 1996-1997, All Rights Reserved