“… the Republic of Macedonia is a landlocked country…”
Who claims we have no sea?
We may not have it now, dabbling at the threshold,
but once we had roaring through the front yard
until it suddenly ran underground, taking our homes
and some of us as well, while the rest were shipwrecked
How could we live without it?
Pushed farther island, we were linked
(umbilically?) until we touched and breathed it over the mountain peaks
Whatever they call it–white, blue, or black–it’s always different
always the same
The thing is–it’s still here, locked in cavernous depths and cellars:
its tide bellows in our dreams, drifts us on the shores of the real:
its salt is drought, and the skies are bottomless high seas…
Our country is an a island left by one Flood, on land,
a glacier caught among rocks softly melting our desires
for the antediluvian Ocean, too many traces left inside us:
its heaving thunders in our veins
and finally (why not?) drinks in our salty blood
We have been punished for spilling the blood of brothers
What else could explain why the sea is so unfit to drink?