Angela Minkova

poetry

POEMS AND TRACES
Angela Minkova
2001

1. And so the Muse refused to take a seat
In the golden throne leaning on the sky –
Created specially for her.

She stared for a short while, then decided:
This act of hers would utterly upset
That dull design she’d gotten used to –
Offered by previous clients.

And we are sad without her in the throne –
Two mother-of-pearl snails sitting there now –
Empty, with no glitter,
Nor embraced in water.

2. My love was only
Pupils – like a blind cat.
I knew where in the Universe it was –
Always and with no effort,
With no special glances.

Then you finally appeared –
My thoughts had stuck all over you.
I held your hand and slowly we headed to
God’s pupils.

3. Yesterday, I suddenly stopped
Between the meaning manifest and meaning hidden.

They were both pulling me –
Both wanted recognition.
Arguments were drawn from all directions,
Each meaning was to make a move.

And then the Sun looked at me
Condescendingly –
And ceased the war.

The Moon was coming up, though...

4. AIM

We had been emptying the lake for years and years.
The aim was one – discovering the secret pearl.
At last the aim was reached –
The secret pearl stared into infinity,
And all its kingdoms had just been granted
To some others –
The award for their industriousness in scooping up the water.

To our joy, however, in this country
There are more lakes.
And so it all starts from the beginning.

5. ADDLE EGG

In the first days of May,
Over the phone,
She laid the egg of expectation
Again
In my little place –
It tastes of cuckoo,
When I look at it.

I stared long at it,
Then aimed my little blue rifle
At its heart.

And fired!

It lay flat, breathless,
The beloved one –
Bleeding.

I joggled it –
It barely moved.

Now I could go out
To seek help.

6. THE GREAT HATCHING

Yesterday at dusk, the month of May,
Just as foretold by Chaldeans long ago,
My complete happiness was hatched.

Long brooded in the love down
Of my human form,
Its name is Fable Marvellous.

It was born with fake teeth,
Each one of them immaculately white.
It only munches on well cooked irreconcilabilities
And grows and grows.

A birth mark in its hand –
Star on a golden wand.
My happiness ambitiously taps on us with the wand –
It taps on us – on me and the Equation of Infinity.

7. My dream topped the hill.
She stopped to take a breath;
Then timidly climbed up
The stairs to my home.

She sat down in the armchair
Opposite the painting where
A dream was swinging in a
Swing hung up in the skies.

I didn’t notice that,
She’d seen the title:
“The Most Beautiful of Dreams Is The One That’s Not Come True”.

Then, with unexpected determination,
She stood up, put on white, new stockings,
And in the spring rain she was headed
To beauty with no problems.

8. Mildew most tender and beautiful
Has grown on my desire for you.

Beauty stuns me –
I want to stop it for an instant
But little by little I notice –
Mildew grown all over my wanting, too,
Also beautiful.

That is the lot our Creator has in store for us –
At first it is an ugly embryo,
Then old age floats in beauty.

9. I waited for you for so long –
My everything got covered
In images and expectations.

True to your nature,
You scraped off all those sticky images
And put them away as a dear trophy.
You headed off again across the hunting grounds
To shoot at other expectations.

10. Carve on with that fine chisel...

This spring I found a book of stone
In an ancient labyrinth.
A thick and heavy book it was – an only volume –
A manual on love, survivor through the centuries.

I wiped away the dust of time;
The title said Me and You;
I couldn’t move the book, though!
That’s why you went to chisel theirs.

I bought the fine chisels,
I found the stone
And started carving on...

11. The sorry plight of the one who’s run away badly is:
To be caught up with
After all his escapes.

The sorry plight of the one who’s run away badly is:
That the secret files hidden in his bread
Become discovered
And the secret signs
On the plaster – found.

The sorry plight of the one who’s run away badly is:
That the bars of some cliche:
“I still love you”
Don’t make the efforts useless.

12. “Here and Now” meets “Somewhere There”.

“Here and Now” is serious,
He has important claims.
“Somewhere There” is absent-minded,
She squints and smiles.

“Here and Now” is in a hurry
“Somewhere There” – not at all.

“Here and Now” says:
‘Everything in my name.’
“Somewhere There” timidly replies:
‘Well, then why was I created?’

“Here and Now” knows not.
“Somewhere There” tiptoes
And kisses him on the name.

13. Her blood didn’t jump up.
She didn’t hear the trap of the heart click.
She didn’t grow pale with the news.

She didn’t dash around town
To break open its deaf walls and get a glimpse of her.

She didn’t even grab on the sword of the wine!

Nothing happened when she found out she was coming.

The day calmly went away to other dark places.
And, tired with sadness, she fell asleep.

In the morning, half-alive love whispered with effort,
That someone else had dreamt their dream,
Their dream with her most beloved.

After the news, she went out – half-dead.
Outside it was full of other people’s dreams.
She got very confused – but...
She went on living.

14. It’s only the cat and the mountain and me
Who know that you’re coming.

Counting the hours – each one in her own way –
We look at each other in blue glances when you arrive.
The cat with her blue look that knows not time.
The mountain with her blue look that remembers not the time gone by.
Myself – with just a blue look.

The cat will keep silent and say everything.
We’ll talk and say nothing again.
And thus year after year –
Before the mountain’s blue look
Disappearing in the dark, astounded.

And nothing will prove that you’ve come...

15. I gave you a book for the summer:
“Me and You” (pocket edition).
With no beginning or an epilogue,
With no times, dates or events.
Just in those five letters of gold
The whole of the story’s described.

Two pages – mine and yours.

You tucked it carefully away
And asked only:
“Why in this order?”
“It doesn’t matter, really” – I replied.
And for the first time you did agree completely with my text.

16. The moon tonight –
A lonely note on the sky staff.

17. THE SWAN AND US

I look into your eyes.
Then in the skies.
The eyes are now resigned,
And up in the sky there floats a bird made of a cloud.
Quickly, the bird becomes a swan.

The swan gets decomposed, too,
Most irresistibly drawn to the “taste”* of our days gone by.

* tastes are rarely to be seen except in those cases when single specimens of decomposing swans,
swimming in the author’s mind, can be seen up in the skies.

18. SECOND-HAND HORIZONS

She was piling up horizons broken down – mending some of them –
She mended some and used them for a year or two;
She didn’t touch the others, she didn’t even look at them.

The sufferings in times gone by,
Regrets –
They still had some traction left
And pushed the human machinery.

She longed for the impossible exchanges:
A tiny, brand new, scarlet dream –
Suffered, crushed for some.

That is how she made ends meet –
By longing
For pure-blooded horizons.

19. When everything seemed finished,
They asked what they were to do.
‘Wait’ – was the reply.

The times of waiting had gone by.
Oh, times of wonder!
And now the times of truth most cherished had come.

She would not ever finish.
They knew it.

And so they started to gradually prepare –
In revelations sinking in Eternity.

20. We kept saying, ‘Enough with This Love!’ for so long
That in the end she went away.

We hadn’t been good owners,
We hadn’t watered her.
She’d withered totally away.
Nor had sufficient sacrifices
Been offered for Her.

She had received numerous calls
From frenzied dry lands
Where they’d kept each drop of water
For Her – most carefullyerHer.
They’d even shed blood in Her Name.

She left.
No further explanations.

And in that very instant everything went dry.
We started turning into dry lands;
We were abandoned.

And it was only then that
We remembered the blood.

-END-