HOPE AND I
I like surprises less and less.
I don’t sense an important mission
on waking up.
I see all too easily what’s swept
behind the faces –
a little greed, great ambition,
treachery and pig-headedness.
These are all my qualities
according to the psychoanalysts.
Fine by me.
She’s small. She plays and
doesn’t want to come back.
She wears a yellow frock.
I pity her a little –
she won’t grow up like other kids,
but will age down inversely
to my aging.
I’ll call her all the more quietly.
She’ll hear me all the more quietly.
My hope. I already need
to feed her.
I’m carrying a spoon.
Transl. from the Bulgarian by Tom Phillips