The law
When I went to the door,
I did not see the doorman standing by.
I saw the handle.
As I pressed it, the dark interior revealed
an age-old baby waiting to be born.
Wheat ears, give way!
Wheat ears, give way.
The wheat ears were darkly silent
under a dense green sun.
I took a step and behind me, there was no trace.
A slow wave is quietly bursting
amidst the wilderness, the stones,
and the wind.
One sunny frosty morning,
death crossed at the traffic lights.
Hewn Egyptian features, thick gray hair, carmine
lips with edges.
‘Vanquish me,’ said my daemon to me,
as I lay splayed at its feet in the shadows.
‘Let me think about it,’ I uttered a labored reply.
Last night in Athens, I met your life.
You were somewhere,
it was in the street.
It passed me by like a breath.
I am standing under the blazing sun,
and watching the frayed fox in the cage,
and from somewhere up above and distant,
death is watching both of us.
While I was growing up, my tolerant nature
coaxed me to lend my hand to the past,
to raise itself.
Buddhist temples, bronze bells.
The hunger of waves
for sand and light
is endless.
I pushed my helmet up,
and my face was bared,
but I did not take it off.
Self-Translated Poems from Dehmony e svyat (“Demons and World”)
by Margarita Serafimova
Published by Black Flamingo Publishing (Sofia, 2017)
Margarita Serafimova has been shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2017, as well as for two prestigious Bulgarian awards. She has two collections in the Bulgarian: Zhevotny e drougy bogoveh (“Animals and Other Gods”, 2016) and Dehmony e svyat (“Demons and World”, 2017). Her work appears in London Grip New Poetry, Trafika Europe, The Journal, A-Minor, Waxwing, Nixes Mate Review, StepAway, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Minor Literatures, The Writing Disorder, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Noble/ Gas Quarterly, miller’s pond, Obra/ Artifact, Poetic Diversity, Pure Slush, Harbinger Asylum, Home::Keep/ Geocommunetrics, Punch, Futures Trading, Ginosko, Dark Matter, Red Wolf, Window/ Patient Sounds, SurVision, Basil O’Flaherty, Borfski Press, Peacock Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Wild Word, Plum Tree Tavern, Oddball, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Sea Foam, Aaduna, MOON, In Between Hangovers, MockingHeart, Renegade Rant and Rave, Tales From The Forest, Misty Mountain, Pocket Change, Poetry Super Highway, Cent, Chachalaca Review, Heavy Athletics, Quail Bell Magazine, and elsewhere. Some of her work can be found here.