After Neruda… | Blaga Todorova

We are continuing in this issue our ReCollection section, looking back through The BeZine past issues and blog posts in this, our tenth year. This poem comes from The BeZine Volume 3 Issue 4, on April 15, 2015. The theme of this issue was “Poetry in honor of interNational Poetry Month.” After we went to quarterly publication, we moved that celebration to the blog, where we still publish a wide range of poetry each year.

Time

In the night, in your mind
my desires glowed like stars.
I heard them
restlessly breathing
and dry whispers arose
from your lips,
they gathered the darkness inside me
and tried to return my sleep,
my heart's pulse.

But the desires went on
cutting through the silence
with their revengeful knives.
And in the desert nearby
particles of loneliness
covered the tiny sand beads
without changing the absence of sound
without ending the bittersweet crispiness
of the dusk.

Only time,
seconds, minutes, hours
invisibly settled between us
like golden leaves in an autumn forest,
like fibers of broken rainbows,
like silver feathers falling into a kiss
over your skin.

And that's all there was that night,
shadows and distance,
divine reflections of forgotten togetherness
and time, time that never broke, descended, passed.
And that's all there will be in most nights
that go over the universe you and I share,
leaving only nebulous, black desires.

A raindrop falls
its sound subdues
to the vast land of dreams.
Everything, everyone is asleep—
the seas, the meadows, the sun, the moon,
the eyes of strangers,
everyone but you and me.
I hear you, you hear me
hunting the twilight on those faraway horizons,
again and again…

Words

Words,
beautiful words,
red wine adagio,
letter after letter
even the violins admire you.
You taste of moonlight
when I spell you out.
You are that forever
nocturnal perfume
making the paper blush,
the pen dry out of ink in awe.
In your texture
the sunrise leans
into someone's ocean eyes,
the evening climbs
to every stranger's heart.
You wrap castles in clouds and
piano sounds, you shelter
first love and sorrow.

Words,
clandestine words,
from lips to lips,
from just a simple inspiration
to a perfect poem,
you astound stars and city lights.
And I, the drifting poet without a muse,
bow, embracing you and the world in
every human victory,
every gentle touch,
every waterfall or river
that never fades into the distance and
never lets the shadows to stain your glory.
You describe forests and jungles,
snow and sand footsteps.
You hold the meaning
of the golden skies tonight,
of the thirsty flowers under raindrops,
of the emerald sparkles
in the eyes looking at me right now.

And in the naked solitude
of this complicated universe,
in the intimate secrets of life as it is,
everything begins and ends with you—
words, beautiful words—I love you.

Almost Love

There is no voice inside me,
no voice out in the light of morning.
It has faded into dust
on the dirty sidewalks
torn down by the unstoppable feet of
those who come in and out of my life.
And there is no recollection,
just longing—irresistible, unfamiliar, pendent
for something to nip, like a fierce,
forever demanding raven,
devouring every unprotected heart
in the silence of what was in the past.

And everything I've left behind—
days with blue odor,
nights blooming with circus lights,
cities broken apart after wars
in the name of nonexistent idols,
everything vanishes under the rules of chaos.
As if the end of happiness has come
and carried with it hope too, piece by piece,
till through damaged doors
the wind blows over my empty world
and makes the eyes of oblivion dance.

That's why the sun rises with slow fire
and love is somewhere hidden
in the far—off foggy mountains,
trembling, surrounded by his ghost
and decisions hurtfully unfulfilled.
In the infinite sound of sea waves,
in the blaze of jasmine skies
is that other me who never learned
how to smile, how to endure
the constant moments of weakness.

It's late, in the cobalt night with fever, but I go on,
from memory to memory, not knowing
to which one to hold and survive,
because in his real life I am absent
and fantasies stream only under
the steady flow of faraway mysteries,
bitten by the pain of a possible "almost love".
Life fills its pockets with moonlight and shadows,
his fragrance is gone again, but as I think,
I never got close enough to grasp the right scent.
And of all that there is, there was,
I own only the cruel scars of loneliness
and they are the only one to confirm my existence.

It Happened in Winter

There was nobody in his heart.
I wasn’t invited but I entered anyway.
There was only an unassailable stray desire,
layered on the empty chambers’ floors
and holes in the emotion fibers
turning my skin a whiter shade of pale.

The vessels of lust were all broken.

It was autumn for the red drops of life
drifting unsubstantially, ruby by ruby,
into a tensed scarlet flow.
Reasons fluttered around,
bittersweet excuses and a dead confession.

And I left. Riven. Blue.
A darker shade of blue. Espoused with
lame stories about exorcism and green eyes.

There was nobody in his heart.
Everything was dismantled,
all the walls were down
and nothing left to possess.
I sat there, quiet and shattered,
no door creaked under the still winter.

Silence was cutting through broken mirrors.

It was summer somewhere else.
In a parallel world, unreachable,
where the light and the silk
had the color of champagne,
the wind had the voice of liberty.

And I left. Defeated. Just like an intruder,
who had seen what shouldn’t have seen.
And I never told anyone,

that there was nothing in his heart
and I was simply racing with the glooms of winter.