Црно на бело

“Time rolled over you just when you were setting off”, it says in Lidija Dimkovska’s poem “Journey”. The reasons for her leaving stem from necessity: war. The ravages of it are felt everywhere and houses and people are diminished to withering ruins of their former selves. Human rights only serve for wiping away dust – at best. Even if the journey takes her to Berlin, Lisbon or New York, her origins, the Balkan, lurks in the background. But there is a dividing wall, thin as the glass partition inside a New York cab or the „automatic door on a train“, which separates one from the rest, cuts one off from one’s own life.