Three Poems

Poetry ~ Tsvetanka Elenkova (Translated from Bulgarian by Jonathan Dunne)
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​1. Jewel Orchid
 
The pistil gives off a smell
when you break it off
and unlike with a macro lens
where you see a part of the whole
here the important thing is the body
It is not a busy bee any more
though it does have a little tongue
but it is Aladdin’s lamp
turban on the left
flame-embryo on the right
even a skull lined with silver
or encrusted with diamonds
I turn it around
full face which is the most important
the forehead is enormous
and under the eyes the heart
begins
 
2. Matchstick
 
I also love matchsticks
their burnt heads –
our mothers’ hairstyles
in the sixties
fungi that protrude
from rotting trees
Trees have a second life –
curly acorn martenitsi[1]
we pin them
to men’s lapels
How uneven how thin
is the border the match
has burnt to
with a gradual blending
of black to dark yellow
to pale
like the riddle of the Sphinx
By which I mean
I also love gunpowder
 
3. Skakavitsa Waterfall
 
You who have a dot on your forehead
a nose like a pagoda
and a cross on your right cheek
a white dove spreading its wings
in the centre
You talk to me kindly carefully delicately
as I pick my way through the land of stings
saying my steps in time to the other’s
are more in the air
than on the earth


[1] Martenitsi are red and white adornments made of wool that Bulgarians wear in March to celebrate the coming of spring. It was traditional for men to wear two acorns, which could be real (the nut or the cupule) or made of yarn like the rest of the adornment.
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Tsvetanka Elenkova has published six poetry collections and two books of essays in Bulgarian. Her poetry has been translated into fifteen languages and was recently included in the sixtieth-anniversary anthology of The Massachusetts Review, And There Will Be Singing. Two of her poetry collections have appeared in English with Shearsman Books: The Seventh Gesture (2010) and Crookedness (2019). Both these books have also appeared in French editions. She is the editor of a bilingual Bulgarian-English anthology of contemporary Bulgarian poetry, At the End of the World: Contemporary Poetry from Bulgaria (2012). The poems here in Jonathan Dunne’s translations are taken from her fifth poetry collection, Magnification Forty, in which she writes poems about things she has studied under the microscope and about waterfalls she has visited. She is editorial director of the publishing house Small Stations Press (www.smallstations.com).

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