Katerina has taken on the challenge of translating poems from Bulgarian and publishing 365 of them on her blog during 2015! This is post number 107!
Late Lesson
This is not Mom’s garden,
where among the beds with gillyflowers and parsley
I was taught to live
within my means,
to balance the rusty scales of freedom
between two homecomings.
Many a year I wore it – an invisible
green scarf around my neck
and more so with my eyes than with my heart
I inhaled the aroma of other exotic gardens:
botanical, balconical,
Luxembourg’s, hanging,
yet I could not fathom
the world’s miracles.
This is a garden at the end of June,
the holiday has passed, the coffee
sits unfinished on the table,
the whole morning a turtle
has been trying to climb the white staircase
and while tapping its shell on the flowerpots
at the foot of the first step,
it teaches me to live
within my dreams.
Author: Aksinia Mihaylova
Translated from the Bulgarian by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
Aksinia Mihaylova is the author of several poetry books, most recently Switching the Mirrors (Zhanet 45, 2015). She has translated over 30 books of poetry and prose. Her French-language book, Heaven for Losing won the prestigious Apollinaire poetry award.
