Georgi Rupchev: The Call of the Rivers

These are my rivers,
I hear
how their waters beat.
I just stumble into them,
without seeking them -
I'm always forgetting where they are.
Somewhere a pile of clothes left behind me -
and splash -
I'm a new owner,
though beaten,
overcome,
confused,
transparent,
diluted.
In the first of them
my friend and I jumped in
and I don't know
which
of us swam out.
The one
who came out,
had cut his ankle;
was it him
or me -
I couldn't tell,
but it was only one.

Whichever was me, it doesn't matter;
more grown up,
on my own
I went into the second,
went in on my own.
Strung a rock about
my neck with wire
and lay on the bottom
until the iron rusted,
then stood up, stretched a bit,
and said: "I am myself!"
And I got clear of the slime.

In the third -
very late
midnight and probably drunk
I threw myself in.
I don't remember how -
however it was -
I was washed up on dry land.
In unknown lands I awoke
and when I decided to return,
I met peoples
whose languages
where meaningless to me.
There I wandered,
and with muddled head went toward the river,
I could hear only the river,
but I didn't know
where it was.

I loved faithful wives, I drank with their husbands,
and headed onwards,
without asking
about the river -
where its source
or to where it flowed.
With how much sweat I salted its sweet rapids,
how much blood it washed away,
how many wounds it closed,
as we played with the water,
as I dove
and sank to the bottom,
how contentedly I shot up
for a gulp of air above,
then how I buried myself
in its bubbling reefs.
From river to river -
through the rivers -
I finally found myself in
a dry river bed -
only a sign of a river,
but the sky above it was still damp.
I hear them,
I hear how their waters beat
I hear how they bear me onward.