Horses and despairs

I saw that my friend Valeri has yet another couple of his poems in print in the BG daily Sega. This reminded me that I can actually try and post one of his poems here, in my translation. Let's see how it will work out.

Prelude

1.

Between the two tropics – to always lose the Equator!
"Archipelágoes...archipelágoes!..." – the same daydreaming,
        the same appeals
(for what?) under the staring moon: o pale and brazen spotter,
a face-smear oozing down the hard up window.

Through cloudy drafts behind cracked windows, thrusted moans –
        descants of a slow night – mirages pile...
And you – with spilled epistles in impótent heart, in weakened heart
of ugly sprouting town – a port with lighthouse slanting in the fog –
        are stuck like a split ship with craggy caverns
on banks blood-yellowed by the lymph of black and sodden rays...
        In back of chortles in the shaken visions, a violet moon collapses
together with a Griffin-cloud in shadows, rambunctious in scrapped porticos –
o, horns of the undying wind – you tremble, and so the skeleton
        of branches...

        Heart without evil – but alone,
heart numb in scratched and sticky semi-dream of vileness:
        ...how you do sail,
feet covering the breaches of the fragile reed remnants, interwoven
with rotten bast – here loosened by the wet, there knitted
        by fire-cracking tar...
...how you do sail – with broken oar, without a horn or bell...
...how you do sail for days high waters that swallowed in addition the syringa...
...the blood hides in the wounded thigh, and hand ripped off by the tumultuous rope...
        ...how you do sail –
in splinter carried like a flag and drifted on dusk-silver currents...
...where is the sun – here every dream is crumbled... where is the sun –
        each day here ends in vengeance...
...where is the sun and where your earth like a dislodged island floats...
...where is the sun – again you're moving, and running terrified, again the fear
far somewhere out of you, inside of you, advances bifurcated,
        the fear – its greasy maw of estuaries.

2.

And in the sunset – hand on throat – just barely,
have splashed your ashen smiles into the window,
and you perceive in the apparent speechlessness of salvos and drumbeats,
in the hoarse neighing and hoof-beats of horses in a circle – still you hear,
above the frozen frightened forests a slit-throat frightened voice is wheezing,
        swung by the blood:

O, evening fields of mine, without a fragrance darkened – turned to chasms –
for caravan and moon, for animal and man;
behind abominable crowds, the city burns;

you hear as in the later moment, above the shrieks and the just sobbed piano,
that crunches grass with polished foot in the neglectful water, look again –
above shrill howls and over pipelines, as if in a backyard and shambles, over crying,
together with old people's prayers, like enchantments, as if a magic of the yellowed laughs –

the shackles are in swing and piled, and not yet cold – and dragged along the roads;
the arms are crushed, the chests are toned, the shoulders – calloused...

Their clang around the raw wounds flexes, and your laughter –
like the enlightenment of a corpse – dejected laughter, over blind lakes in lofty forests,
is their clang – lint of the craters in the soil, in heart and mind...
In alienating home – with daydreams of a ship, and later
        the ship turned into home –

‑ what, what still keeps you here, what – plunge into the bad sea!...

3.

...Again the same delirium, the same appeals!...

Night like a coffin clamps your feet and bites into your straining temples;
a vulture – bearded, loud and generous – flies by, your eyes away to ferry;
a dolphin – wise, but deaf and sad – transports your skull like a glass vessel on its forehead;
a black crab follows – stare of quartz, hard flippers, protecting clusters of a poisoned seed –
        across sharp sand and into withered grass…
The archipelagoes are sinking, muddy, behind the reefs and all the starry valleys –
        into the furrows of departed ships, and vanish…

And you arise together with the dead – transparent on the bottom, in a green and tender-muted feast…
        And you fall on your face; the mast has hit you on the shoulder…
Again arises – giant, clear, alarming – on the horizon a dilapidated town;
under the buildings – water, over the buildings – water, in front of them – a sunken lighthouse,
        beside the carcass of a brigantine.

        Heart without evil – but alone,
heart in the midst of detestation, raise the stone, that was in use in stead of anchor!...
In front of you again the sun – a ball unfurled by nails – is rising!...

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(C) Valeri Daskalov, 1998
(C) Elko Tchernev, translation, 2004