Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Dostena Angelova-Lavergne

Translated by Zdravka Mihaylova

Warm weather

The warm weather
Grows old

The stones: rings
Around the gnawed bones
Of lovers

(suns)

Chariots bent
Under prolonged days
or else,
Chains swollen
In the language of dreams

Ripe mulberries stained the sidewalks
On the eve

They slaughtered ten noons

Offering sacrifice

To the frenzied for blood

Equinox

* * *

In what boredom the trees came into leaf
Under the siege
Of the green:
(On sale after June 30th)

All leaves
All branches are present

(it was drizzling
one of these salty tastes
of loose skies)

They filled the small gardens and yards
Where winter and death used to idle

(Naked bitches - their feet were turning blue)

It was raining in the grass
Souls of trees turned into ravens
Three deaths and something
Separated them from my childhood

* * *

Till flesh
Faints
The tenderness of memories
Dream with a body
Smells the sweet dust of stones
The dust of my grandmothers approaches
My own body
Virgin from death
But touched by nostalgia

Unfulfilled,

Unfulfilled

Will dwell

The eternal birth

Of grass and stone

* * *

Chains
Of endless details
.......................................
Imprisoned the dead
Amidst
Two unspecified worlds

* * *

Did you see? the shoulders of the rain
How they sat up straight
The expectation
in the stone garment

* * *

I stood
on his forehead
Like a night watch without payment
Like the ones who collect birds
(in case they dare to speak)

Biographical note

Dostena Angelova-Lavergne was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 1972. Graduated from the National School for Ancient Languages and Cultures in Sofia. Pursued university studies in anthropology in Switzerland and France, also obtaining a diploma in International Relations. Lives in France.

Her poems have been published in literary reviews in Sofia. She participated in the First Meeting of Balkan Writers and Translators in Alexandroupolis (Greece), held in 1998. Her first collection of verse, I am and Dream, was published in Sofia in 1999. The same year she participated in the international Writing out of Exile symposium "Waves of Three Seas" organized by the IWTC on Rhodes.

English translation © 2002 by Zdravka Mihaylova. Internet publication by kind permission of the author and Zdravka Mihaylova.

Huit poèmes de Dostena Anguelova en français