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in this issue
tongue-tied
Useless Explanations about Writing and Not WritingTranslated from the Bulgarian by Valentin Krustev
1.
it begins with the usual clumsiness
of using words that can be spelled with caps:
Love or Motherland or Poetry
and also vows, prayers and those sorts of references.
the circles of uneasiness expand concentrically
to include
sun, fire and bread,
sea, spring, thirst and finally
you find it difficult even with
mother
so what's your choice
2.
my voice says something not mine
a caught idea? suggested? overheard?
and what shall I write down?
and what of it?
and what if someone overhears me?
if he sets about it and goes on?
if he goes on wrongly or vice versa?
like in a game of broken telephone
or like those leaflets
with incomprehensible purpose
found now and then in the mail box and
demanding they be copied eight times and sent
to someone
entitled
Letter of Happiness.
3.
books up to the ceiling.
And no one expired.
It looks threatening, but it is not,
you just can't stop noticing them
and no amount of getting used to helps.
More or less arranged, here is a line from A.S. Pushkin to W.B. Yeats.
Thousands of soul supporting reasons
to give up writing.
4.
it might be no vice (writing)
in itself. However, when
its energy suppresses love
dries up compassion
betrays one's own folks
one becomes nothing more than
an obsessed passerby going past one's own life.
***************
(c) Ekaterina Yossifova, 2002.
Translation (c) Valentin Krustev, 2006.
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