Here are the English translations of some of the poems in my latest Bulgarian poetry collection "Любов на площада" ("Love on the Public Square"), 2014. The book includes love poems and political poems written ( in Bulgarian mostly) during the last 35 years.
Vladimir Levchev
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
(ЧОВЕКЪТ НЕ Е ОСТРОВ)
“No man is an island entire of itself. . .
We all live in Manhattan. . .
At 8:45 in the morning
I was walking downtown.
The streets went murky, the towers stood bright,
the House was deserted, the wind slammed a door. . .
A radio kept singing: “Downtown, downtown. . .”
Then I saw the tower of the world,
the sunny double tower.
And I saw the airplane hijacked by a dream,
I saw the swift shadow of the Unconscious,
I saw the archangel of Death
sink in the mirror,
sink in the sunny high tower
downtown. . .
Then the blast of bad dreams. . .
Then the late summer snow
of a million silenced letters and pictures,
the delicate snow of memories
pouring over the world. . .
“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the West – sun there half an hour high – I see you also face to face.
. .
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!”
. . . a snow of letters, pictures and shoes
falling, falling on Mannahatta.
Then I saw the black wall,
the hundred and ten storied wall of depression
approaching on the narrow streets,
midnight approaching at noon
downtown,
I met the midnight of global madness. . .
“. . . if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me. . .”
Then the night passed away and I saw
Durer’s St. Anne with swollen big eyes
in a nurse’s green dress
walking through the rubble,
through dusty asbestos ambulances and wind. . .
I saw the faces of the dead and the faces of the living
walking together downtown.
I saw the faces of the world.
I saw your faces.
“And death shall have no Dominion.”
9/11/01
written in English
FIVE YEAR AFTER 9/11
(ПЕТ ГОДИНИ СЛЕД 11 СЕПТЕМВРИ)
It's been like in those dreams:
you are at the beach,
in August, in high school,
green airy waves and laughter
of girls and
seagulls.
And the snow begins to fall:
slow letters
and shirts
from a heavenly explosion.
And the smiling faces
of teachers and kids
morph into monsters.
Later black kites and ravens
fly by low
over the leaden ocean.
And you realize
that your dream has come true:
you have grown up.
And you can't wake up anymore
in that warm
other country.
9/11/2006
written in English
JUSTICE FOR ALL
(СПРАВЕДЛИВОСТ
ЗА ВСИЧКИ)
When a poor man begs at the door
it is a shame.
When the rich man’s company begs on the phone
it is commercial strategy.
If a poor man sends someone
to kill his neighbor,
this is a terrible crime.
If the president sends his troops
to kill some of
the neighbors,
this is patriotism.
The rich man can buy himself a senator.
A poor man can buy himself
the newspaper of the rich man
and read about the senator.
Yes, the rich kid goes to law school.
Yes, the poor kid
sells drugs in the alley.
Justice for all.
translated by the
author with Alicia Ostriker
A WIDOW IN NOVOROSIYSK
(НОВОРОСИЙСК)
A southern sea and
trees
white with cement dust.
Sweating concrete
buildings
turned green.
Novorosiysk is proud
of its ugly monument to
the perished heroes
of a senseless troop
landing.
The city resembles
that young wrinkled
widow
in torn stockings,
a dressing gown and
slippers,
who walks the boulevard
and stares at the tourists.
She knows
it is no good to be
pitied.
And she does not want
to be pitied.
But she hopes to
embarrass.
Novorosiysk, USSR, 1989
translated by the author with Alicia Ostriker
THEOLOGY OF THE SONG
(ТЕОЛОГИЯ НА ПЕСЕНТА)
God is something very
small
and transient.
It trembles inside us.
Outside is death.
* *
*
But if a man sings out
when stood against the
wall,
is he not greater than
death?
For is not man
stood against the wall?
Let him sing!
translated by the author with Henry Taylor
THE BALKAN BRIDGE
(МОСТ)
For
Ismail Kadare
For millennia we have
quarreled,
for millennia we have
built and demolished
the Balkan bridge
(over the Drina,
over the Danube,
over the Ujana e Keqe
in Albania). . .
For millennia we have
asked ourselves:
Where is the Golden
City –– East
or West?
Where is the real
Prophet?
And what will be our
profit
from that bridge
between the Sunrise and
the Sunset?
With knifes in our
teeth,
we have asked
ourselves:
Is it true that living
people,
our people,
have been immured
to make the bridge stronger?
For millennia we have
quarreled, and fought,
died and killed,
built and demolished. .
. .
Meanwhile
the airlines were
invented. . .
Today no traveler can
see
our ancient bridge.
translated by the author with Alicia Ostriker
LOVE
(ЛЮБОВ)
You are
beautiful
like a sea
in the warm fall:
the ripe
quince of the sun,
the horizon
swimming with haze.
Your
movements are shadows
on the
flaming sand. . .
You are
beautiful.
And a swift
smile passes:
the shadow
of a gull on the water.
You take
possession of me
like the
solitude of white dunes
under the
thorns, the wind, the sunset.
You take
possession of me
like the
calm instant before sleep:
like a ride
in a stroller
under the
golden poplar trees of the first year.
Untouchable!
You are
untouchable, like yesterday.
(Now that
dreams rush on and startle me:
a swelling
sea in the cold night.)
You are
untouchable like the past
of the man
without a future.
Nothing else
is left for me,
but to
imagine we are together
and kiss you
in the cold
under the
solitude of stars.
I love you,
because you
do not exist.
translated by the author with Henry Taylor
IN THE STORMS
OF CONSTANT PARTING
(В БУРИТЕ НА
ВЕЧНАТА РАЗДЯЛА)
In memory of Danila Stoyanova
(1962-1984)
In the hurricane, amidst the stubble
the bright bluebell, nothing’s eye,
is too small for the lightning to
strike.
The sycamores, red-hot, hiss in the
rain,
a bolt strikes the field, rocks are
scalded. . . .
Unable to take cover, the flower
stands watch
and at last becomes the blue sky.
Sky – short-lived and fragile flower,
brightened by magnetic storms,
breathing in the darkness, blue atop
green,
it flickers, blooms, fades,
beholds the death of stars.
In the horror of the dark cosmos
who blew in the seed of the sky?
Who loves all fleeting things –
a ray of sun, each conception,
the history of the earth itself?
He could be as small as the
tear
that brims in your eye
in the storms of constant parting:
a flashing beacon in the sea of
death.
translated
by the author with Henry Taylor
BLUE POND AT BERKOVITSA
(СИНИЯТ
ВИР КРАЙ БЕРКОВИЦА)
We swam naked out of the pond,
and the pond flew into our senses.
We climbed up the afternoon slope
and the chill inflamed our bodies.
Down the road I saw us walking.
But the road was leading inside me.
That bonfire was not only smoke:
the stars still singe me as I fall
asleep.
On a damp sheet on an old bed
I entered your dream that evening.
But now it pulses on my forehead,
making love to my naked soul.
The desk and the lamp –a circle of light
in a churning creek, in the
mountains. . . .
A scent of pine and snow and menace
and, down below, a blue dusk
prowling.
The withered summer breathеs from the
grass.
The grass smells sweetest when
freshly mown.
After we looked into the dark space
the blue sky seemed warmer and
closer.
The moon is mute and red, resembling
a widening wound in the dark.
Life is open, it bleeds and drains.
Only the death of the world is
eternal.
translated
by the author with Henry Taylor
DEVIL AND GOD
(ДЯВОЛ И БОГ)
The Devil is
the difference between us.
The Devil is
the secret
everyone
knows about himself.
God is
something we have in common.
God is what we
don’t know.
DE PROFUNDIS
The dark
blood of the late sun
slips in
under the bars
of your
kitchen window.
The backyard
smells of pot and rat.
You hear
gunshots.
You are free!
You are free
to buy a gun,
and even
shoot yourself.
You are free
to watch television the whole day
and drink
warm Bud
waiting for
the eviction notice.
Yes, you are
free
to buy that
million dollar home on the screen
with the
surreal blue sky
and the green
lawn with the kids.
Or at least
you are free to dream.
You are free
to apply for
all the great jobs on earth
that you will
never get,
because of
bad color or bad karma.
Yes, you are
free, brother!
You are free
to dream the boldest dreams
alone, under
the stars, or under the rain.
translated
by the author with Alicia Ostriker
A DREAM
(СЪН)
Like a
drowning man
I embrace
you.
I turn to you
in the dark
аs a sunflower
тurns toward a
lighted match.
I am speaking
to you
as the lone
tree in a long night
speaks to the
wind.
It is cold
And you are
only a dream…
The One I
love
is not here.
I embrace
you,
because you
are
His shadow in
everything:
You are the
great absence
in the world.
translated
by the author with Henry Taylor
THE BALKAN
DANCE
(БАЛКАНСКИ ТАНЦ)
We are the
Bulgarian soldiers in Macedonia
blinded by
Basil,
the emperor
of Constantinople.
We are 15,000
men.
One in every
ten of us
has one eye
to lead us.
We hold
hands, walk and trip,
like a ring
dance
from horizon
to horizon
under the
light of the sunset.
We were
returning home
to our king Samuel.
The king saw
us
and died of a
heart attack.
But we didn't
see him.
So we
continue our dance
barefooted in
wild forests,
on the embers
of camp fires,
sliding on
frozen lakes
under the
cold sharp constellations ...
We are
dancing towards a new millennium
and all we
can see
in our future
is our past.
translated
by the author with Henry Taylor
THE FLOWER I
WISH TO GROW
(ЦВЕТЕТО, КОЕТО
ИСКАМ ДА ОТГЛЕДАМ)
Is a flower
quite insidious and rare.
It fails in
the hands of biologists
who pick
or plant it.
Hypnotic, the
wind brings it from nowhere
and sows it
in the corn.
Watchful
farmers weed it out,
disturbed by
their premonitions.
But the
careless ones pay no attention.
It grows and
ravages their fields;
steals forth,
lays siege to the houses
and they
fall; it slips into dreams,
suffocates
the dreamers –
debases them –
and so they
laugh,
insisting
they're happy.
It can even
crack open their skulls
and blossom
fire into the sky.
It's an
insidious creature:
subtle as everything
so tender and fugitive.
It wakens
quietly and multiplies in Death's bones and brain
and lungs –
it spurts metastases
so incurably
alive.
And it is contagious:
latent as sadness in the eyes
of a yearning woman,
in the eyes of a lonely man,
or in their bodies:
hidden like sorrow, gathering, abiding,
until such time as its victims writhe
with fever and laughter.
It is desperate, ravenous:
feeding on everything, transfiguring
what it eats, consuming foul slums
and turning them into new worlds.
It swallows banks and factories,
converting them to children's laughter.
It swallows loneliness –
which becomes the voice of God.
It swallows sick bodies
and turns them into stellar music.
It consumes minds
and they become nights lit up by crickets.
It engulfs all anguish
and engenders a galaxy of love
violently opening in the dark ...
And in the end the Flower
will be the end of the earth.
It will open its sweet maw of fire
and swallow the unwell world
to become its meaning.
translated
by Carolyn Forche
