Post by moira on Sept 19, 2008 16:18:09 GMT 2
Blaga Dimitrova
translated by Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi into Farsi
Blaga Dimitrova, born in 1922, one of the most popular and loved writers in Bulgaria, was vice president of her country in the first democratic government after the fall of communism. She is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, novels, plays, and essays. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. She has won the Herder Prize, the Hristo G. Danov Prize, the German Krugge Prize, and was awarded the French Medal of Merit for Freedom.
1
I doubt my faith
in my lack of faith,
that my life was a waking
between two dreams,
that my breath, taken from the air
will return to the air,
that I will catch the moment of death,
when my whole life was only a moment.
2
The silhouette of a love,
refracted in my memory—
rootless seaweed
carried from far away
on a warm current.
How much bargaining with circumstance,
how many devious moves,
how much struggle with ourselves
and risk and recklessness
for just one meeting.
So close—the sea, jumping out of itself,
and again subsiding to its own element.
Around us—tourists,
shrieking cutouts
on the boiling background.
Only the two of us are quiet—
a small island amid the chaos,
so stormless, almost a mirage,
set against reality,
against your ticket home,
against tomorrow.
LULLABY FOR MY MOTHER
In the evening I smooth her sheets,
covered with deep wrinkles.
Her hand,
withered by giving,
pulls me towards the night.
Half asleep, barely able to speak,
she says in a childish voice,
so naturally,
"Mommy!"
I become my mother's mother.
A cataclysm, a reversal
of the earth's axis—
the poles flip over.
What was I doing? I don't have time
for philosophical musings.
I dry her impatiently—
a skill, I've learnt from her.
"Mommy," she whispers, guiltily,
remembering her naughtiness.
Cold air blows in the window.
The heating pad. The glass. The pills.
To adjust the lamp shade.
"Mommy, don't go away!
I am afraid of the dark!"
Who is losing her mind, she or I?
Heavy with pain and fear, crying,
she waits for me to take her
in my arms. Two orphans cuddle
in the winter cradle.
Which am I?
Wake me up early tomorrow!
I am afraid, I'll oversleep!
Dear Lord, is there something
I have forgotten?
Who will be late, she or I?
Mommy, my child, sleep!
Lullaby,
my baby . . .
Translated by: Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman & Elizabeth A.
Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi is a poet, translator and freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she was twenty-two. Her poems appear in the anthologies Contemporary Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She is the author of The Last Night with Sylvia Plath: Essays on Poetry. She has extensively translated World literature into Persian. Among her several publications are: Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, Marina Tsvetaeva, Blaga Dimitrova, Iroslav Seifert, Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, Women Poets of the World, Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry Pablo Neruda:(A Passion for Life), and The Beauty of Friendship: Selected Poems by Khalil Gibran. Her latest work is Anthology of American Poetry.
In the link below one can read an "imaginary interview" with Blaga Dimitrova. As Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi explains:
This is in fact an imaginary interview because I arranged it after the death of the poet.How?!
I used the parts of her poetry as answers. The poems used were translated from Bulgarian to English by: Niko Boris, Heather McHugh, Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman, Elizabeth Anne Socolow, Brenda Walker, Vladimir Levchev, and Belin Tonchev.
www.thanalonline.com/Issues/03/Interview_en.htm