EKATERINA GRIGOROVA

 

The Sunset

 

Will we ever be able to fly in e.e. cummings’ balloon?

Two people soaring high into the city sky,

higher than the smog, then lower - to see how

the roofs gleam and traffic wauls.

Or perhaps we’ll spot others like us staring into eternity -

with sad steps renouncing their lives.

Or other people torn from the pavements,

throwing out glances like discs

that melt in the sun.

Perhaps these are their wager with the firmament:

the two of us will be in a balloon that strangles death

in the top of an evergreen tree.        

Board on the Wet Sand (2014)

 

Translated By Hristo Dimitrov And Tom Phillips

 

The Strange Science Of Immortality

Or The Sentimental Confession

Of Aubrey De Grey

 

I am at the end, my love, and I don’t know what it is about immortality

that terrifies me in this quiet place.

Forget-me-nots in a girl’s perfume remind me of

 your ecological ruins.

When we travel among them, our ears ring from afar,

                                                          confusing us like children

frozen in the field amid nothingness.

You know what I think: “If a single hair falls from her head,

                                                                   a heritage will remain,

precious not only to biologists.”

And “Blessed are all the birds on the trees,

among which there’s no tree of life, no tree of knowledge.”

And so I stay here and drift away, convinced in the absence of a happy past.

Then I stroke my beard slyly,

                    to ask if some day after a peace

so methodically cultivated, something dedicated to loss

will stir in my soul.

I asked the same question each time when I was able to take for granted

                                      the possibility of your face,

the shafts of endless light

                             in our projected martyrdom.

There, there was an old man with no beard at all,

swaggering and reclusive, and you -

endowed with the idea of being immortal.

There was a creek and gnats which were laughing: We are the eternal ones.

Staggering, they put a full stop in the softest wax.

Board on the Wet Sand (2014)

 

Translated By Hristo Dimitrov And Tom Phillips

 

Excursion

 

Houellebecq at 15 travels with his class.

Germany is a story and he’s shoved in his bag

a volume by Pascal.

The column moves in near-inexplicable order:

all anyone sees is the backs of their heads

and they jostle down the Ku’dam.

It happens that the space between them

grows.

Then they gaze at their shoes, crack jokes,

pay no attention to the heavenly girls

as they stumble.

Here they are – people with no chains,

with no death penalty,

who are being killed by love.

Some already are, some will be.

Imagine a line of the unhinged

with exposed arms and legs,

as yet without bodies,

who will love one another,

be free.

 

A Blue And Yellow Film

Without A Drop Of Blue Or A Grain Of Yellow

 

Plaster galoshes hang over the threshold of the Swedish apartment blocks.

The enormous laces clatter in the wind.

This installation is meant to remind us of something -

a kind of a vacillation, a shattered culmination

of every insurrection.

The sea with its magnificent garlands and gelid puzzles

bears us in stormy equilibrium.

There, at that Northern end of the world, there are

wild strawberries and tall merchants.

The slope - dust from the dust - fits      

only certain sensibilities

who are not looking for love or guilt,

or darkness in order to curse it.  

Board on the Wet Sand (2014)

 

Translated By Hristo Dimitrov And Tom Phillips

 

EKATERINA GRIGOROVA

 

EKATERINA GRIGOROVA: (born in 1975 in the town of Dobrinishte) is a Bulgarian poet and author of numerous poetry publications. Ekaterina Grigorova is a laureate of the Binyo Ivanov National Award (for contributing to the development of Bulgarian poetic syntax) in 2014, as well as the Slaveykov National Award (second prize) in the same year.