I think of yours, voted into pure verbs.
Is there snow on the traitors now?
The moss-green slopes you crossed,
shiny and deceptive as satin lingerie-
where are the lies buried now?
The ramshackle sheds tilt north and south,
and barbed-wire posts and broken bushes
crook fingerlike out of the ground.
They kept their language and they lost their lives.
LYUBOMIR LEVCHEV
Flying Away
I think about flying away. I see
the sunset as the autumn of the skies.
Frost-tipped red light sweetens the air one last time.
A sigh becomes a prayer abroad.
I roll a word uphill toward the summit
of a futile song.
God surely speaks a different language.
And I do not know how much I understand.
It seems He has not created us,
but has merely admi tted us
into His lonely meditations ...
And now He has regrets.
But it is late.
Too late now.
The sunset is quenched. Longing is never quenched.
Clouds sink. Submarines leave Groton.
And night-flakes are falling like black snow.
Translated from the Bulgarian
by
Chtiliana Halatcheva-Rousseva
