Lyubomir Nikolov
A cigarette in the late afternoon
For Anthony Petrosky and Ellen Bishop
This morning, for the first time in months,
I listened to a bird. I don’t know its name. I don’t even need to.
It woke up early, enclosing
With song its empty summer home,
Charting the borders of its transient kingdom.
That’s how it is. There always have to be bounds.
Water, poured into a glass pitcher,
Must fill it to the brim. No higher.
Dough, thrown into the kneading trough,
Is to rise, but not overflow.
And with the song it seems to be the same.
One bird, almost invisible among the branches
Proclaims to its sisters: ‘My borders end here.
From here on all of the trees and sky are yours.’
The day wears on. It too has bounds.
And the clouds roaming in the sky
And the houses staring at the ground
And the churches tolling for vespers
And coming toward me like a flock after pasture
With horns of gold and bells on their necks –
Everything has limits. And that’s fair.
I light my cigarette slowly, with delight,
Because even the delight will eventually end
And I watch how smoke pours
From the slender chimneys,
It flows into the sky, warm, sweet,
But the fire is down there where it belongs. With the ashes.
And when I hear the chimes ring from the nearby yards
And a plane vanishes somewhere behind the mountains
And the tired children return home from school, I tell myself:
It’s time for this poem to end
So that something else can begin. And I put a full stop.
Translated by Miroslav Nikolov
Page(s) 35
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