AT EIGHT O'CLOCK


   Sleep lifts its eyelids -
   gapes :
   traders, nightmare awake,
   calculate loot
   (and prison bars),
   the first pancakes of the day
   have long been sugared and now
   doze off in mysterious entrances
   to city stomachs,
   Sofia girls - having danced
   in men's embraces all night through
   now sweetly sleep it off...
   The brainless one
   again wags his tongue lined up for tripe,
   the one who shouts, shouts "Three Cheers for
             Work!"
   sits at his desk
   (before the desk of the silent one).
   Ruffians have already donned innocent eyes
   of obedience,
   the gossip machine isn't yet plugged in -
   its operators still yawn - the coffee house is
             closed... Alas!
   Who says our
   weekday poetry has been depopulated?
   Who says poetry of weekdays
   lacks problems ?
   At that hour
   nobody yet knows
   whether yesterday's leader
   wil1 still be leader when he wakes up today,
   no one yet knows
   whether Ia st night
   the rosary of conscience was stolen or not
   from the office safe,
   nobody yet knows
   whether the personal driver of the Personality
   knows that he too is a personality...
   Nobody knows at this hour -
   why I envy the number eight for its two zeros,
   and why I don't envy zeros in the least.



              AT CENTRAL STATION


   At Central Station
   in the centre
   of the refreshment room
   drunk railmen
   drink their twentieth mug...
   Young boys passing through
   woo Didi
   pretty Didi behind the bar,
   they raise their glass trumpets
   and blare forth
   enthusiastically
   and rummage once again in their pockets when
             standing at the
   cash desk.
   At the end of working hours,
   at this endlessness of working time
   the clock stands
   astride a notice "NO SMOKING"   ,
   but cupping a cigarette behind his hand
   and blowing smoke onto his breast,
   a cap - lustreless and desperate -
   after the ennobling festivity of work...
   The militiaman still in uniform - doesn't drink.
   On duty!
   He shrugs, then resolutely decides not to kiss Didi
   or the bottle...
   Comrade Yoncho Valov Yonchev
   has disappeared again
   let him report to the dispatcher...
   Unsuccessful actors
   turn into commentators
   over-successful bores -
   into dictators
   and dinosaurs remain the same -
   part of cosmic mutation - Humanity...



                 SO WHAT!


   Outside on the clean plate of the moon
   are scraps of doggy joys
   already phosphorescing...
   Time please, remember we have to clean the place!
   Please, comrades!
   Escalators scatter everyone...
   Everybody's on the move -
   downwards - towards heavenly dishes,
   upwards - towards the hell of life.


                                         
             A STONE IN THE SWAMP


   The stone's finely wrought parable
   ends with a plop!
   And the circles of life start rippling
   and dissolve in the silence.
   The stone's finely wrought parable!
   The water turns over in its sleep,
   rolls from its left shoulder onto its right
   and
      some
         flying
             frog
                lies
                    down
                       in its bed of slime.



   ANOTHER STONE IN THE SWAMP
   A translation of K. Pavlov


   The stone
   I threw in the swamp
   turned into a frog.
   And started to sing
   with the rest of the frogs -
   also former stones,
   thrown
   by another naive soul
   into the swamp.

                           

           MISERY


   Because the straitjacket was short on me,
   they put me in a knight's boots.
   They stuck a headpiece on down to my eyes
             and chopped
   off my arms, just in case.
   And because since then I only meet knights,
   I rush to shake hands with them

   and sometimes I get away alive.



                 UNTITLED


   The mouths of the people eating their lunch
   the mouths of the people eating their lunch
   chew,
   they're careful not to spill their soup,
   chew
   so their main course won't get cold,
   chew,
   thinking about tomorrow's dessert,
   which
   they love, the people eating their lunch.
   From their chins to their wattles to their
             thighs
   hangs
   their word,
   but the people eating their lunch
   catch it
   in a napkin
   and the word crackles like a bug
   which surprised
   itself with its own jump towards them.
   The mouths of the people eating their lunch
             keep silent!

                                     Translations:M.Nikolchina (At Eight 
                                     O`clock, At Central Station); K.Pavlov
                                     (An Other Stone in the Swamp); G.Belev
                                     & L.Sapinkopf(So What!, A Stone in the
                                     Swamp, Misery, Untitled)