I do not live: I burn. In acrimony raging Two souls are dueling within my breast: The soul of a devil, the soul of an angel. Their breathing is flame and it gives me no rest.
Not one flame bursts but two - whatever I am touching, And in each stone two heartbeats I hear clash⦠Wherever I go there is an odious doubling Of two warring faces, which vanish in ash.
And everywhere the wind that follows me is spreading The ashes: all my footprints are effaced. For I am not living - I burn! - and am shedding A trail of grey ashes across a dim waste.
A translated poem by the Bulgarian symbolist poet and revolutionary Peyo Yavorov, the so called "singer of the soulful abysses", about the eternal bifurcation of the soul. Translation by Peter Tempest.