PETYA DOUBAROVA MOOD The whole sky stumbled on a cloud, and tumbled like a temple dome. Then like a plane, it shrieked, it shouted. And I saw, angered again and dumb, the night rain, lean to kick the clipped off border of the cloud. Joy, branching out in me, was an oak and vast the width of its crown... For my life is a playful minute, snatched by a long day - instantly, I live quite unnoticed in it but now all the sky lives in me. B.T. SATURDAYS On Saturdays I'm unappreciated - wild, flexible, and lively as a lynx. And tiredness, having turned into a whim, vacates me like a wound - healed up and faded. School totally collapses in my mind and I am far from registers an blackboards. A hundred thousand rivers run towards me, tints, hues, and rainbows fill my eyes, and I get rhythms from those gipsy women. I'm very, very strong - a vine in spring, and I turn my guitar into a tear; I never ask questions, never listen. On Saturdays I'm unappreciated - wild, flexible, and lively as a lynx. And fear, sorrow, tiredness or whims vacate me like a wound - healed up and faded. And I'm not even sure who I am. But when I put on Monday's uniform - that blackboard-tunic once again, I turn into a good girl as before. B.T. WINTER HOLIDAYS They melted like snow in my hair, then died like a cropped out plait. My panting day is dreaming they're here, my morning pursues them to stay. Heaping snow in my cave of delight, I hide some image there, a secret. Then textbooks overcloud my sight and swooping tests speed up to hit me. Sweet holidays, I yearn to have you in memories that branch like vines, and in my winter herbarium keep you like a miniature tear of ice. B.T. DEDICATION On chilly night, when drunk on rum, sleep wallows in my attic room, the moon grows darker from its sins, when, strangled upon night's sharp rim, right there - above me - fear hangs, it's then I offer my pale hand to you - you strange and furtive man so tame, wild and swarthy, very handsome, and only nineteen years this fall, but having seen and knowing all, with your independent creed, yet searching for me - mine indeed, and having fallen, wept and erred, but your boyish tenderness preserved - to take my domineering hand: I make you brave, feel more a man. We'll wash the moon of sin. Come, dear, we'll rid ourselves of the corpse of fear, and with the voice of a ship we'll blast - the kind, night voice of my Bourgas. And when the night backs with the moon and when the sun showers treasure down then having outgrown your fantasy you'll set off smiling, next to me. B.T. *** A youth Betrayed Forgiveness A dream A memory Behind the walls of a big house A SECRET B.T. *** Drowned stars are floating on the sea. Salt burnt the freshness of their colour. How softly, without taking leave, they lost both light and power. But I would turn my heart right now into a pyramid, a sell, and it would bring them back alive, ripe in its flesh, like a shell. B.T.