Universe at Dusk

***

Blendness -
to feel no sadness on the corner
of Broadway and Sixth.


***

An ancient Negro bellowed at the bar,
was being understood and brought a soup,
the Negro; and the Negro 's stirring it
long, too long and
concentrated while
the sun shimmers on the showcase yonder.


***

It is always the time of Law.
Law flows like the sap without which
matter shrivels -
it is always the time of Law,
yet you want to be spoken to.


tr. by Hristianna


***

Climb the aerodrome and live there!
Wind will blow through your hands and chest
you'll see where the clouds float from
and where they thaw.
Live on the very runway -
there, the wind is redolent of mountain springs,
there, the water cleans the mud, melts the dust
and swirls the tiny pebbles.
Live on the very runway -
On it, your heart is simply in the air
and your eyes sink beyond the horizon,
the barriers thaw away and in the end
they simply merge with the surface.
Live on the very runway,
there the Earth descends onto your palm
like a tool.

tr. by Zdravka Evtimova


Twilight Universe

But life is
life within the Cosmos:
right amidst infinity, no earthly lid above!
It dawns
or just a leaf is shed and you behold:
deep there in space your breath commands a flame to sway, your palm
leaves a trail upon the night. The bridle-reason bursts
and bosoms start to bloom for breathing ready.
You are the Universe
and bridled right across your skull you are,
this bridle gnawing at your heart.

Reason lays the human unto death,
his life resounding echolike. He weeps
and death responds to it, rejoices keenly,
screams in ecstasy of joy and echoes once again.
All sorrows and desires, branded by the end,
distort the world into a pendulum:
it swings and measures the remaining time,
it strikes around, the human stricken falls
before a twinkle standing up – a way to live
behind defensive walls, in regiments of dread and fear,
or locked within a hundred ambushes of doubts. Sorrow-knowledge
fights oblivion-delight but doesn’t triumph over it,
it just withdraws to fight it ever back again.

But life is
life within the Cosmos!
You are here, breathing gently,
and in every place your heart is drawn to.
Once you’ve come to be: a star, a human or a bug,
the law of heaven watches over you
lest one should be of lesser value. Once you are,
you may be seen among the stars,
a seed of heaven sown in earth.
There’s neither death nor end:
you find awaiting on your way
the parts of life which run through you
and burn away without a trace –
the shining of the Sun possesses such a warmth!
There is no end and no beginning:
whatever comes befalling you,
it comes to make your being brighter
and brightness be itself more human.

You twilight.
The world is gleaming fish in fishing nets;
you are those nets –
a pair of hands that throw a bait of thirst amidst infinity
and pull ashore infinity instead.


***

I find myself amidst infinity,
while a crack is running down the pane.


***

The good old yellow lamp
that long has overlooked so many pages full of words, still shines
as though no words or pages has it ever overshone at all.
Thus
the Sun arises.


***

The blacker the night had become,
the better I started to see your features.

Impossible was it for me to be any more,
so I conceived myself.

tr. by Peyo Karpuzov