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New poems:

PAIN

When you hold a bottle and hear the wind

through the open throat

when you put a conch to your ear

the echo pain from the emptied body

and when a single slight hiss

as of a punctured bicycle tyre

finally fills the empty space

like a newborn’s wail

Take it carefully in your arms

and give it or don’t to its mother

but take it carefully

it’s so fragile all cartilage

Give it water or leave it on the shelf

by your head

THE HOLE

How to distinguish a warning

from an attack

They don’t just pull your slender strings

which everyone can see

but dig right in the hole

thanks to which the sound exists

The hole only he knows

and doesn’t just play

but draws out the sound

Because you were foolish enough

in the interval

to leave your instrument on the stage

or in the hands of

unqualified musicians

THE RECEPTION

for my father and Butch

We never know when we are seeing someone

for the last time

We only feel a sadness

as when my father went away

from home

as when my cat came back

home

So emaciated

Maybe we leave before

we have left

And then we bury them

(or throw them in the rubbish)

which is more or less the same

aren’t graveyards also a place for remains

One we don’t tell

another doesn’t realise

They ring years later to hear you

and end up offering their condolences

That day however something strange happened

something very strange

They played Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

and the traffic was stopped on account of a military parade

as if they were receiving a very important guest

THE WHOLE

Many roots leaves

thickly entwined

we talk about how in love we are one

without losing our identity

like the Trinity

like a Rajasthani artist’s depiction of

Krishna and the gopis

two haloes merged a heart-shape

two bulbs

which have to be separated

the leaves thinned out

for new roots and leaves to grow

for new life

From The Seventh Gesture:

THE WOUNDS OF FREEDOM

Some buy leather leads for dogs of a definite length. Others prefer automatic leads with a reel. You let the dog run at will but you decide when to retrieve it. I set mine free. But two or three times it ran away and came back covered in wounds, so now I set it free but only in my yard. My dog howls at the squirrels, in the evening at the moon. And when we pile firewood next to the fence it climbs up and jumps over it. And again comes back with wounds. After that I decided to keep it on a chain. For my dog to be free of wounds.

MASOCHISTS

Because from an early age we endure pain. Except for birth perhaps, which our mothers bear. And that’s why birth pangs are so strong. Until the walnut’s husk darkens, until it hardens, until the green outer covering falls away. Until it no longer dirties our fingers. Until the bitterness loses its taste. Until many months, seasons go by and someone cracks open the walnut. Fallen before from your grandfather’s sack. Because it is hollow – a real relic, the nut. From a metre sixty to a mere sixty. That’s why we are masochists. Inwardly.

TIME

Time fills with words drop after drop like a sink with the plug in. Time also has an overflow. Two or three who couldn’t bear it and left. A few stayed behind to measure time. Some fidgeted on their chairs, handed each other notes, whispered in their neighbour’s ear; girls lifted air with their skirts, not having aprons as their grandmothers did. Others listened carefully (you’d say they’ve an exam soon) and took notes. In the hall it was stuffy. Drop after drop trickled down their foreheads.

THE DAY

The day dawns rosy as a baby’s bottom. Soft and smelling of fluff. With yellow around its mouth. And down on its little head. Only one small cloud of saliva as it sucks. The day dawns with birds cooing. Sometimes, if it’s a boy, in blue. Nappies of pure cotton. But we neither teach it nor mimic it. We do not give it rattles or teething rings. The day, lonely as an abandoned baby in front of an orphanage, waits for someone to pass, to take a fancy to it, finally to show it on the news. Let’s hope the parents have it back.

UNDER THE VICTIM’S NAILS

for my father, Stefan Elenkov

If skin has memory, as doctors maintain, it means the house you leaned on last, the sea you swam in, have not forgotten. Only my dresses have forgotten because I take them to be dry-cleaned or wash them often. But our sea, which is so enclosed streams can’t reach it – the vertical wall under the eaves the wet can’t get to – they have not forgotten. Like a pelican’s bill or a camel’s hump, they save the memory for a rainy day. Like a victim’s nails, which still keep hairs from a killer’s skin.

THE SPARK IN US

There is a wire between the thighs and palate. A wire on which the organs are hung like laundry. Trousers with their two legs, corsets, handkerchieves of various sizes. In a gust of wind the line comes undone and they all fall down. There is a wire that conducts electricity, and at each end a small tongue. Sometimes there’s a short circuit and the electricity board sends someone out. They open the door of the meter affixed to the wall, check the seals, you pay up. If you do not wish to pay, they lay your wire underground.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Of all who lied to me, I believed all, but you most. Who lied to me the most. That part in hide-and-seek, when you pretend not to see your little friend, your child. It’s the same when you let someone start or slip him a card. Then you shake his hand and kiss him on the right (or left) cheek. You – out of love for him. He – out of love for the game. In a similar situation Orpheus turned round and also didn’t spy Eurydice. Didn’t spy her. But she receded. They say, by the will of the gods.

THE TIME WE ARE TOGETHER

for Jonathan Dunne

In the time we are not together, the time sinks. Like a pressed piano key. Even though it emits tone, music. In the time we are together, the time is silence. You do not even press the right-hand pedal, which doesn’t give out a sound but sustains it. The time we are together is silent. Our hands interlocked as for prayer. You’ve already written the words I wanted to say to you. And I will write the words you have to hear. The time we are together is so silent that in our absence you can hear only the rustle of one or two leaves.

ADVICE FOR MY UNBORN DAUGHTER

‘How can God be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?’ asks my daughter (and all who can’t explain His three faces). ‘Like a cherry-tree,’ I say, ‘when it blossoms. And it is tree, flower, and sweet-smelling. Like a woman,’ I say, ‘when she’s in love. And she is soil, cell, and sweet-smelling. Like a man,’ I say, ‘when he loves. And he is stars, seed, and sweet-smelling. When one spring you look at the Milky Way with the first drop of blood in your knickers, you’ll understand what God is. Then you won’t want to wash it off. No, you won’t.’

I WANT YOU EXHAUSTED

I want you exhausted like a blue cloud which has just stopped raining, like a mature brandy, like a snail whose shell has been broken, which ever so slowly descends a steep slope, like laundry which dried long ago, like an old woman’s mottled hands, I want you exhausted like a blue cloud hanging over me, as I wait at a red light and a warm spring breeze rises, melting the snow, sifting the leaves, and we sit in short sleeves at the café tables, I want you exhausted like a sliced liver.

MY BROTHER WAS WRITING POETRY

for Alexander Elenkov

While I was writing my verses, my brother was working on his boat. He carefully dismantled the seats. He upturned the boat, sanded it down to white (making the cherry-tree turn white). Then he took it to a master to be given a number, to pass the test more easily. He applied putty for hours, then an undercoat, the way people polish teeth against tartar or put plasters on grazed knees. He circled it and wondered what to christen it. He named it after the hero of his favourite film. While I was working, my brother was writing poetry.

THE SEVENTH GESTURE

With finger on mouth, when you do not want to wake someone or the teacher walks in. He puts a finger to his mouth when he wants to quieten the class. Or he tells you straight to shut up. But what intrigues me most is the way it slides down, pulls away from the lips. After you’ve imposed the silence. Some just loosen their hand, others draw it out to point, others hold it longer like this. And a fold in the fingers, bliss from the tiredness of the unwonted gesture. This is how the Byzantine iconographers first painted them. The saints.

From Amphipolis of the Nine Roads:

A FUNERAL AFTER PYTHAGORAS

I walk on the nails of scriptures

their planks of music and word

I start from the music

in between the feet, it is everywhere

in everything

in the folds

separating the altar from the world the words

of some priest spouting words

and in the triplet of 3 the number

nailed in the middle with a note

with this chipped 1 a fish-hook

strung poison bait

tear in the 0 in the shirt in language

I was sliced in 2 by the cold

when I waded barefoot into the lake of esoterics

and memory rippled on the surface

up down left

right

everywhere 1 and the same

the 1 is also a nose sometimes, and

my profile in the mirror is 3 Aristotle but

I mustn’t forget the apple

its other pale side

I turn around and it becomes 8 in the middle

this band coltsfoot again

stopping the coughing the confusion

of the truth that half of 8 is also 3

with its hook 1 – half of the half

of any thing that is in heaven above, or

that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters

beneath the earth

fifth book of Moses after the fourth Numbers –

1 dying and carried in for a funeral

in church

The axis is the plank the axis

the smoke from the thurible curls

the slanting axis the beam of the world

in the crucified 0 (God is always crucified)…

the tree the seed the husk swells

seeking out its earth

some shoot always slides sprouting

9 of a sudden

the legs doubled pain and birth

4 the openings the wounds the senses

1 and… we breathe in

1 and… we breathe out

MY SPRINGTIME

(contrary to Nikola Vaptsarov)

Black is my springtime

circles before the eyes

after

gazing at the sun for a long time

black is your hair your body –

the first glare of the sun

on the potted flowers

I got burnt

drops of olive oil on my hands

your phallus

a scorch mark

that is slow to leave

Black is my springtime your eyes

two pits

for Muslims to bury their dead in

Winding down winding

the shed shroud and shyness

goatskins are your sides

painted

by Ethiopian women

the fingers hazelnuts under the stone

slipping out

as I try to splice them

Your body is all salt

and wisdom in the shadow

of a slumbering beast

Wisdom is like the muscles

I say

so packed and elastic…

Black is my springtime

mulberries cherries

children press them in ring-a-ring o’ roses

The wheel turns

in a vacuum

Mother unclogs the sink

my heart’s Morse

(not frost…)

the first birthday telegram

Black is my springtime

black is

the God of vegetation

All poems translated from Bulgarian by Jonathan Dunne

Read some poems in Bulgarian