Translated by Veronika Velcheva

AT DAWN

How will you write if you are not sincere,

said the poet and took a sip from his glass.

Its bottom glimmers, and the evening slowly sails to

its never-ending repetition, the endless metaphors

about it shedding like golden scales.

I would’ve told him about childhood,

about the unread books, empty days,             

about the erstwhile dreams of him, sadly short however,

about the cockroach in the flat and the fear of my mediocrity.

About my brother who is getting older.

The evening dawn  lies down on my forehead, but

it is still dark.

I take a sip from my glass and remain silent.

ANTIQUES

The clocks were mute.

Only one rustled rhythmically,

delicately dark, it

stayed silent and worked in the corner, like a

hunched, beady-eyed blacksmith.

So as to challenge the thing that was moving in it, and

moving me invisibly,

I looked at it with scorn, with

the most diligent coldness, with fear, turned
inside out. And at this moment

(a spark upon an anvil)

it loudly

laughed three times with its pendulum.

I passed by it with the same scorn and

then I was absorbed in an amber ring.

And the heart of the old oil lamp secretly
sank.