Kaloyan Pramatarov

When

 

When all was wrapped in ice,

The flocks of birds had pecked all

our happiness a long time ago

and black waters had flooded our dreams

we were being born in that darkness

when the conscience of Sofia lay sleepy

under the blanket of snow

and the frigid breeze made our faces numb,

up North, in the sky, a star had appeared

and thousands of footsteps made by model citizens

mapped the fate of one entire nation

to which we didn’t belong

and never would belong –

unbiased nobodies, mentally weak bodies,

local foreigners, we balanced on ropes,

stretched between the panel apartments,

exhaustion would settle comfortably on our faces

and in the morning we’d get lost

in the concrete labyrinths

one lying to the other, that we loved each other

 

 

Postindustrial

 

Eleven floors of thoughts

Held tight by iron brackets

a watch tower of history

for generations of halfwits.

Through my window and the iron bars,

I see colossal sheets logic

Piled high, stacked by cranes, red-hot tempered

In the furious furnace of human decisions.

The industrial anthill screeching below

As a snow of narcotics and alcoholic rain falls

And the ants never sleep.

Steadily steam hammers measure

life’s rhythm

and it seems the devil, limping in the sunset

holds this city in his pocket.

 

 

Sometimes

 

I think that sometimes I go crazy, when outside is getting

darker

and I hear all of you singing – this is a dream,

blood dripping from the sinks, trickles down your thighs,

centuries of sinking in these naked bodies.

 

Now and then I’m thinking, I’m really going mad, I’m

Losing it at dawn,

A total nut-job in the tunnel, dreamlike

I see you in the coffee, dissolving like a gentle sugar

dressed in white,

images are melting in the mirror wholly

tempered red, before a knitted wall of thoughts

I’m glancing to one side, to a field made out of bloody

grins,

needles made of bronze into escapades of copper,

senseless acts of takings will require givings.

 

Sometimes I am thinking I’m really going crazy, swallowed

by the TV,

little white stars are falling excessively, and somewhat I’m

stoned

the smoke sticks to a body that’s mine,

honey flows, it covers me fully.

 

 

Translated from the Bulgarian by  Marta Slavova