one more Petrov

One more from Valeri Petrov, translation again mine:

The carkey

Late last night as I parked the car at home,
I dropped the carkey in the dark,

This morning I went out around seven to find the,
And looked perplexed at the pavement in front of the house -

Toothy little leaves had covered the whole area by the car
And each of them looked like a little copper key!

And it's plenty cold, smoke curling out of chimneys,
But between the rows of houses the skies are blue,

And without realizing it, I've already gone into the park
And the car is far away and dim in the darkness,

And it's bright and quiet, with that smell of Fall
The moist smell of decay, yet pleasant and fresh!

And I feel how my life has passed through me
In a fast torrent, a kaleidoscopic spinning.

Valeri Petrov, in memoriam

Two Lads

I saw two young buddies
In front of a shop with two electric guitars.
The guitars had strings and buttons,
The lads were in jeans with pockets.
The guitars were glossy black,
The lads were entirely enthralled
And stood transfixed
In front of the counter,
Their cheeks sucked in in anticipation and fright:
That the two guitars
Would be theirs at some point;
That no other will manage
To get them first!
And over here, from the lads,
And over there, from the guitars,
There flowed a dialog without words
And it was so sad - so sad that
We, busy with purchases of beds and bedspreads,
Judged them harshly: "what delinquents!"
And don't see how they, having taken up their guitars,
With bandanas and bright shirts,
Float through the roof and fly towards heaven,
Higher, higher, up there somewhere,
Where Armstrong the god says to them with his raspy voice:
"Come on! Where you been? Can't manage without you!"

-Valeri Petrov, in memoriam. Translation mine.

Roman Kisyov: "They said..."

They said:
A poet doesn't feed a household

They said:
A poet can feed
Only the worms

O, no -
The poet feeds the pigeons
The poet feeds the eagles
The poet feeds the angels
The poet feeds the hearts
    of people still hungry
For Truth and Light.
With but five verses
The poet can feed the multitudes.

Roman Kisyov





Казаха:
поет къща не храни

Казаха:
Поетът може само
Червейте да нахрани

О не -
Поетът гълъбите храни
Поетът орлите храни
Поетът ангелите храни
Поетът сърцата храни -
    сърцата на хората
Който все още са гладни
За Истина и Светлина
Поетът може с пет стиха
Хиляди да нахрани

Роман Кисьов

Pirinski poems

from the Bulgarian of Z. Pavlov Pirinski


I loved you,
you loved me more.
I loved you,
you loved me not.
I needed you,
you ran from me.

Go, enjoy the peaks and abysses.
For you I was too level land.



 ---------------------------------

"Send Lazarus over here to dip the tip of his finger 

in water and cool my tongue" - Luke 16:24

The angels' tender touch
The water's cool caress -
these are the devils' most cunning torments.
Man can acclimate to anything
but momentary mercy.


----------------------------------

A secret grief
sleeps fitfully, hibernates erratically
in its chosen cave
waking now and then
to stretch, sigh, yawn, and defecate
to scratch its back against
the cavern's jutting stones
to look bleary-eyed out
at the pale morning light
and gauge the day -
to sniff the chill air with expectant malice
deciding whether today
   or tomorrow
      or perhaps next month
         to slouch towards Bethlehem -
to disdain the present
and turn in place a few times,
curling its dense bulk into an opaque ball,
and to sleep once more, furiously sleep
till tomorrow's expectant dawn.

Rupchev: Moving

It's a winter morning.  These people are moving house today,
the truck is waiting, its driver calmly frowning
and they load up their life, couch, and extending table;
the new place is on the other side of town.
They lived here sixteen years and four months,
with the walnut bedroom set, the children's cots;
they barely got the three-section wardrobe out,
hopefully the door at the new place will be taller.
They are quiet in the snow, the rope slips and twists,
then they load the desk, the refrigerator, the two buffets,
the lampshade, wall-hanging, pots with two dry ficuses -
and love, bound up tightly in blue bundles.
Finally and at last it's loaded -
two boxes with pictures and valued shells
and the twice-glued teapot from the wedding,
and the inherited rug eaten away by footsteps.
So the driver zips up his jacket,
and the kids wait on the corner with a radio
and the wife wrings her hands and sobs a bit,
and gets in up top with her husband, and they set off.

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.

Andrey Filipov: Lines Written under a Summer Oak

Lines Written under a Summer Oak (1965)


On the rickety table in front of me,
a hundred leaves of paper wait.
Thoughtless and white
they make me think
that the earth is flat
like them.

Suddenly a leaf flies down from
the sky - at least a hundred colors -
but I can't read it,
seated here in the cool
of this summer oak
at this disappointed table.