A NAME TO REMEMBER
We stood in front of the gouged earth where the casket with her body was to
be placed. Our own water poured from our bodies, the liquid of our corporal
oceans, seas, lakes. The hottest summer day was the end of her earthly life, and
she was to find her eternal repose on the body of the man who had been her
husband, while he was alive and while he kissed her lips, her hardworking hands,
while he was buying her clothes, and she prepared seasonal dishes in the
kitchen, made baked apples, pear rolls, dried figs. Oh, the sweet deceit of
their endless love, their nightly caressing, the quivering feelings of their
nightly unions, the daily separations, the painful touch of their children's
illnesses, their demonstrations of love. And now he receives her, after fourteen
years, his corpse entirely untouched by the earth, from the cradle of his sudden
leaving. Ohhhhh, the sweet departure fulfilled by a rich lunch, ice cream,
doughnuts, crepes with honey and walnuts baked with Béchamel in the Siemens
oven. Ohhhhh, sighs from the touching of our moist summer skin, our
unforgettable noon love in our friends' bed in ‘43 while we licked the
occupiers’ lollypops of caramel sugar, plum strudel and white horse squadrons,
while they were cutting the fresh lines of our dreams, ohhhhh, while we were
lying fresh, young, and beautiful in the white Anglé sheets. Ohhhhh, this
sudden pang of imagined scenes as they plant her body on the body of her
husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, who has not seen all of his
great-great-grandchildren, the shadow of his shadow, as now she places herself
on his fresh erect member, on the memory of what they reeeestricted and
reeeestraaaaineeeed, my dear companion, she is met by his dry mouth as we lay
her finaaal body on his finaaal body, to join finaaally on this August summer
spring day in the dry too dry Skopje earth in Butel and think the rose unites
their hidden wishes, their fourteen-year searches, waitings, awaitings all
crushing now, here on our sweaty bodies, her distant name, given at her baptism.
Why a flower, I ask myself, we ask ourselves, as we bite into the fresh, meager
mounds of apples, minced figs, dates, and we abandon the Ohrid cherries, gotten
only half an hour ago, to the sour worms, because that ruptured rose bud she
wanted to save from the August heat is the reason for her dying. Death in the
image of a rose. Ohhhhh, this dry, too dry, earth receives her soft body washed
in white wine. My hands, movements, motions, are now the last touches,
reminiscences she keeps in constant memory of her earthly life and takes them
deeply, endleeessly into this river, deep, final intent, resignation from
everything that has gone before. The flooowwwwweeeeerrrs! Will we ever forget,
ever, these marks of the Skopje summer, while fully deserving, her body lands on
the casket of his body. Ohhhhh, that body entirely prepared for her body, for
the last final reception. The sweet deceit of life, of distant death. What did
you prepare for me fourteen years ago? So arises her painful question to our
heads, dizzy from the heat. Where have all these people been, surprised and
distorted now, here, they watch the casket where his dead, mortal body still
lives in the dry completely barren earth of Skopje Butel summers. Scissors and a
rose fall on his body. Was he the one to send that rose blossom, those scissors
in her hand, to get her to himself finally, on the stray erection of his member,
ready since long ago for this reception, and finally this flower garden has
arrived, this unopened body of his afterlife to sprinkle him with the light of
the forgotten days, with the velvet fog of the nights while he molds his own
children, their future grandmothers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers. Painful
memories of life. Painful memories of death now uniting them. And as the empty
crepe silk bag where his bones were to be gathered flutters, ohhhh, is it
possible for those bones to be gathered in a crepe silk bag and, no, no. They
have not been gathered because he has been waiting for her utterly in a
fourteen-year erection, he has been waiting for her young eighty year old body
redolent of white wine to drink of it beneath the deep dry earth in the Skopje
Butel summer. Ohhhh this replacement of life, ohhhh this sweet deceit of our
melted bodies taken to the limits of bearing, to the limits of powerful life
circumstances, that still provide us life, ohhhh this endless longing for life
she has put an end to with the name of her name with the name of these scissors,
ohhhh can the objects of our delusions still be remembered, the objects of our
falling in love, losses, everything that becomes real and endless, on this
suuumer noon of the Skopje Butel summer, while the feet sink knee deep into the
dust of the summer August earth, suddenly lighted by the glow of the hot sun and
suddenly returned into the darkness of the covered hole. The light remains above
in the aroma of the parched earth, the wax of the dark candle. Brutal memories,
why should I burden you now as you are passing Epiphany noon, when the cross has
been thrown into the waters, around here, filled with snow and ice? And still
the smell of white August wine that falls asleep on her young white skin absorbs
the longing for remaining feasts, the sweetness of forgotten meetings while the
faces of the unborn children, grandchildren, greaaat-grandchildren can be seen,
their coming wishes that will never come to this white breath of wine captured
in her still living pores, ruthlessly closing under the pressure of the sudden
rose-scissors, under the pressure of the uncomprehended life stamp on her name –
the Palm Sunday she celebrated every year on Palm Sunday and without knowing
that she had been stabbing her own days, her own nights of the life diminishing
for her. What is now this heat on your pink name, on your shadow filled with the
fragrance of the red rose, on the green grass of your forgotten yard, garden,
happiness passed in daffodils, dahlias, a candle that finally flickers in the
view of your remaining things, your memories of you. Ohhhh, where go these stale
sentences, words, address, to what number of life, what date, to stop it final
and endleeeeesss, if we are not already a candle on your noun, on your pronoun
for us now here standing, sweating, in front of the vacant blinding Skopje Butel
heat: rose-scissors?
Now it's time for fish: from Dojran, from Ohrid, but not from the sea. Seas
do not enter this custom. Seas do not belong to this custom any more. Where are
the seas now? I hear this eeendless question of your buried soul, the male body,
sea bream sizzling in the hot oil over the burning fire in the fireplace of our
forgotten relatives on the coasts of the white seas. Now we are looking at
Vardar perch, frozen Dojran smelts. Ohhhh, sweet customs, ancient promises that
return this funeral to me, that return this summer August Skopje Butel funeral
to me in the cold January Epiphany days with a color of a forgotten rose cut
with iron scissors of the cold steel of her utility, her insentience. Am I
embarrassed now as I notice the sweet little bone, invisible, transparent, of
the smelt crinkled in the hot pan? Should I address the drooping rose on the
green grass of your garden now, should I think of the meaning of your first name
you carried all your life happily, carelessly, startlingly, now, while we were
bringing you gifts on Palm Sunday, the gifts of spring sprouts and while we
enjoyed your flower garlands lining the knitted sheets, the milieu of your life,
now?
The summer sweat slips--heat on the skin of our bodies, and you protected
under the emulsion of the white wine finally approach the fourteen-year wait the
August Skopje Butel summer has drawn you closer to, the heat, the omega of your
forgotten alphabet. Ohhhh, good-bye, good-bye, so I address this life pathos
forever!
We celebrate EPIPHANY with the Epiphany lunch of sweetwater fish and the Palm
Sunday specialty coated with sauce of fried nuts with garlic. Is this a pledge
for your soul.
Once again: GOOD-BYE to our forgetfulness of YOUR SOUL! You have come closer
to a stale holiday of a completely forgotten agrimonia-soul.
PALM SUNDAY--my dear soul, our happy forgetfulness, our dear historical
pregnancy, everything is now just a happy token of what the future prepares for
us, without the presence of our memories of the past. My dear girl, remind me of
the past, of our forgotten games, of the river flowing away on the photographs
of our demolished shutters "Home Sweet Home" the distant relatives address me
from distant countries. They will never return here to see the flame of the
yellow candle burning out on the body of your wine leaving.
Good-bye, good-bye, my dear happiness. Good-bye, good-bye, my happy memory.
We are the forgetfulness that does not stand guard!
