The recipient of the third annual Settlement House American Poetry Prize, Lyubomir Nikolov, was born in 1954 in Kireevo, Bulgaria. He worked for 10 years as an editor of Literary Forum, a weekly newspaper of the Bulgarian Writers Union. In 1991 Nikolov came to the United States and has lived in Montgomery County, Maryland since 1992. He is author of 11 poetry collections in Bulgaria, the United States, Argentina, and Austria.
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Quinces
July ripens and swells.
Did it happen? It was a dream.
Quinces are yellowing among the stars
like Saturn’s moons.
What will happen next? Whirlwinds
of opaque stellar dust.
But the branches will not break,
and quinces will still hang.
They will drop. All winter long
the snow will melt on them.
Fragrant and invisible mist
will rise towards the sky.
Up there in unreachable branches,
dizzied by the aroma,
the bird will sit on her eggs in a nest
padded with quince blossoms.
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Villager
I’ll pull weeds. I’ll pick the ground clean.
I’ll swing the scythe. I’ll lug water.
I’ll tend a vineyard. I’ll make brandy.
I’ll praise saints and ancestors.
Every morning and evening
I’ll walk the nanny goat to the billy goat.
But if the barn owl has foretold
that my home will fall to ruin, so be it.
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First Steps
We will learn to walk,
mother.
We will learn to walk.
Now, when
walnut leaves
rain upon
the potato field
and the frog
with its turquoise back
jumps
through the autumn
canyons.
Now. Now
we’ll learn to walk.
The Lord is good.
You will get on your feet.
Without any help,
you will go there:
To the hearth.
To the well.
To the string of onions.
To the jars of jam.
To the barrel.
To the garden beds.
To my father’s grave.
To my grandfather’s grave.
To the bed of leeks.
To the bed of cabbage.
To the Milky Way.
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Fog
The fog flows.
The mountains move.
Where are you going, boy
the stones ask me.
The stones in the dirt.
In the walls. In the river.
I raise my collar and shut up.
The fog carries me away.
Grapes hang from the vine.
I chew one. It is sour.
I planted pears for the worm.
Hazelnuts for the woodpecker.
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Time
To be awakened by silence,
to realize
that time,
time itself
has aged.
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Fire aesthetics
No matter how you put it
in the fire
the wood is beautiful
when it burns.
Even by itself
it is still beautiful.
But I love
the union of kindling,
logs
and leaves.
I love
for the fire to remind me
of the wood
before the ax
felled it to the ground.
I want to see it in a camera obscura:
At the very bottom,
in the ashes,
the leaves will blaze.
The branches
will grow from them.
The trunk will rise
among the branches
and roots will spread
inside the chimney
to wander among
smoky clouds.
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The grills by the sea in Málaga
Only the fire knows
the wind’s direction.
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The nest
A faucet
dripped.
The sun appeared.
If there were somebody to talk to,
I would have told him everything.
The nest, for instance.
I found it in the thicket, empty.
The bird had braided a string from the grass
And tied it to a stalk of wormwood.
I pulled out the yellowed wormwood
and like that, tied up, I brought the nest inside.
I don’t know why I spent hours peering into it.
Now I see: I could look at it for a lifetime.
I would show it to everybody.
I grew attached to the empty nest.
Oh, I also picked grapes.
But I left a few bunches here and there.
The frost singed them and they grew even sweeter.
You pluck a grape,
and it is so sweet in your mouth, it melts.
Wasps and birds you say?
I’m not afraid of birds and wasps.
I no longer fear anything or anybody.
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Hotel Chelsea, New York
It was raining.
The window
facing the street
stood ajar.
In the dark
between two
lightning flashes
I heard a woman’s voice:
Oh what a handsome man I have
between my legs !
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Nerja, Andalusia
High
in the palm,
green as its leaves
a parrot
chuckles.
Below,
in the pine trees,
the sea groans
and casts
waves
and half-naked
statues
on the shores.
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Under the tree
As
it fell
the quince
whispered to me:
Don’t grow attached!
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***
For Jorge Sagastume
I am a ship full of Mendoza wine.
My hold is dark.
I recall nothing.
But I ring from within.
Inside me sing
a million bottles of
southern wine.
The waves toss me like a cork.
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Wearing Stefan’s coat
I put on the coat of my dead friend
and outside in the yard,
I gazed at the moon
between the branches.
Rustling
autumn
leaves
fell.
Wedged
between
two stars,
a cricket
chirped.
My hand reached
for the bottle.
It poured some wine,
put the bottle back on the table
and raised the glass.
Splash it in the birdbath
I yelled.
And it did.
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San Clemente
The shark hunter
pointed at the ocean
with a bitten-off finger.
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Corrientes
Come with me to the filthy hotel,
from the balcony I will show you Corrientes.
Don’t ask me questions, I am deaf-mute.
Prop your elbows on the hot metal
and watch how with a steady hand
I pluck children and churches from the shallow sky,
how I pull houses from the red dirt,
huge houses with fiery windows
reflecting the Paraná.
I lie in the Paraná and it carries me.
I am behind you, I caress you, I admire myself
in the mirror of your tanned back,
I am in the river, gnawed by the piranhas,
in the jacarandá branches, in the bar,
between the thighs of the bronze girl,
in the morgue with the old drunks.
Everywhere. And only in Corrientes.
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Bar Cristobal del Puerto
The sunset will suffice for all the houses.
For all the palms around the bay the sunset will suffice,
for the governor’s dog among the begonias
for the slightly bent cross on the cathedral
and for the bloodstain on the pavement
as large as Argentina herself.
The half-dead bleed in the red dirt, screaming.
I gently touch the snifter,
stick a finger in the brandy, suck on it,
and as I sit, I want
to drive my tongue into the sun itself.
If I fall asleep on the barstool,
I would like to dream of my daughter.
It is terrible not to have one.
I know, I can fall asleep but I don’t.
I always fear something will happen,
an orange will fall in the puddle, a dog will pass by
but I will sleep and miss it all.
I must keep watch, or I am doomed, Argentina.
Chest-deep in the Paraná, the fisherman smokes.
A dwarf with a pink umbrella begs under the window.
The clock is stuck at ten to three.
A selection from Idle Lava
Translated from the Bulgarian by Miroslav Nikolov
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ЯБЪЛКИ
Ябълките са окапали.
И гният в двора.
И теб те няма. Инак всичко друго си тече по старому.
Щурецът скърца в сухата трева.
Стъклото на прозореца е счупено.
Камъкът е паднал до леглото.
Възглавницата е покрита със стъкла.
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APPLES
The apples have fallen and rot in the yard.
And you aren’t here.
Otherwise, everything else goes on as before.
The cricket creaks in the dry grass.
The window pane is shattered.
The stone has fallen by the bed.
Shards of glass cover the pillow.
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РАЗРЯЗАНА ЯБЪЛКА
Семките са вътре в ябълката.
Ябълката е вътре в семките.
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SLICED-OPEN APPLE
The seeds are inside the apple.
The apple is inside the seeds.
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ГОСПОДАР СЪМ НА ПРАЗНИЯ ДОМ
Влизам в спалните, лежа по леглата,
Галя тежките скринове, пълни с бельо,
Мириша парфюми
И в чаршафите бели заравям брадата си.
Огледалото снел от стената
Бродя из къщата,
Гледам как в него надничат
Огледалата от другите стаи,
Вазите розови, синьото пате във ваната.
От шишето направо смуча ром “Барбадос”.
Отварям прозорците.
Бавно, едно по едно, пердетата паля.
Ела.
Лесно ще разпознаеш Червения дом,
горе на хълма във Хайланд.
Той гори.
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I’M THE MASTER OF THE EMPTY HOUSE
I enter the bedrooms, lie on the beds,
Caress the heavy dressers full of linen,
I smell the perfumes
And in the white sheets bury my beard.
Having removed the mirror from the wall
I wander about the house
Watching how the mirrors from the other rooms
Peer into it
The pink vases, the blue duck in the bathtub.
I swig “Barbados” rum straight from the botle.
I open the windows Slowly, one by one,
I light the curtains on fi re.
Come.
You’ll easily recognize
The red house, up there on the hill in Highland.
It’s ablaze.
(All translations into English by Miroslav Nikolov)
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