Ah Consuela! Invoking vast vistas for visions of green Spanish eyes,
I discern them again where she left me back then,
                 as we kissed when she parted, my friend.
Through those ruins I tread towards the footlights, now dead,
                 where I’ll muse as her shadows ascend.

                  .
                          .
Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she teases the mirror with green Spanish eyes;
her serape entangles her brooches and bangles
                 like lace on the sorcerer’s looms,
and her cape of the night, she drapes tight to excite,
                 and her fan is embellished with plumes.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching as spectators savour her green Spanish eyes;
taming wild concertinas, the dark ballerina
                 performs on the music hall stage,
but she shies from the sound of ovation unbound
                 like a timorous bird in a cage.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she quickens the pit with her green Spanish eyes;
as the cymbals shake, clashing, the floodlights wake, flashing,
                 igniting the wild fireflies,
and the piccolo piper’s inviting the vipers
                 to coil neath the cold caldron skies.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the shimmering shadows in green Spanish eyes
as I rise from my chair and proceed to the stair
                 with a hesitant sip of my wine.
Though she doesn’t deny me, she wanders right by me
                 with neither a look nor a sign.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she looks to the stage with her green Spanish eyes,
(for her senses scoff, scorning the biblical warning
                 of kisses of Judas that sting,
with her pierced ears defeating the echoes repeating)
                 and smiles at the magpie that sings.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching faint embers a’ stir in her green Spanish eyes,
for a soft spoken stranger enveloping danger
                 has captured the rhyme in the room
as he slips into sight through a crack in the night
                 midst the breath of her heavy perfume.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she gauges his guise through her green Spanish eyes
– from his gypsy-like mane, to his diamond stud cane,
                 to the raven engraved on his vest –
for a faraway form, a tempestuous storm,
                 lurks and heaves neath the cleav’e of her *******.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the caravels cruising her green Spanish eyes;
with the castanets clacking like ancient masts cracking
                 he whips ’round his cloak with a ****
and without sacrificing, at mien so enticing,
                 she floats with her face facing his.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the vertigo veiling her green Spanish eyes,
while the drumbeat pounds, droning, the rhythm sounds, moaning,
                 of jungles Jamaican entwined
in the valleys concealing the vineyards revealing
                 the vaults in the caves of her mind.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching life’s carnivals call to her green Spanish eyes,
and with paused palpitations the tom-tom temptations
                 come taunting her tremulous feet
with her toe tips a’ tingle while jute boxes jingle
                 for jesters that jive on the street.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she rides ocean tides in her green Spanish eyes,
and her silhouette’s travelling on ripples unravelling
                 and shaking the shipwracking shores,
as she strides from the light to the black cauldron night
                 through the candlelit cabaret doors.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she dances till dawn flashing green Spanish eyes,
with her movements adorning a trickle of morning
                 as sipped by the mouth of the moon,
while her tresses twirl, shaming the filaments flaming
                 that flow from the sun’s oval spoon.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she masks for a moment her green Spanish eyes.
Then the magpie that sings ceases preening her wings
                 and descends as a lean bird of prey –
as she flutters her ’lashes and laughs in broad splashes,
                 his narrowing eyes start to stray.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching fey carousels spin in her green Spanish eyes,
and the porcelain ponies and leprechaun cronies
                 race, reaching for gold and such things,
even being reminded that only the blinded
                 are fooled by the brass in the rings.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she shepherds the shadows with green Spanish eyes,
but as evening sinks, ebbing, the skyline climbs, webbing,
                 and weaves through the temples of stone,
while the nightingales sing of a kiss on the wing
                 in the depths of the dunes all alone.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the music and magic in green Spanish eyes,
as she dances enchanted, while firmly implanted
                 in tugs of his turbulent arms,
till he cuts through the strings, tames the magpie that sings,
                 and seduces once more with his charms.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, the citadel steams in her green Spanish eyes,
but behind the dark curtain the savants seem certain
                 that nothing and no one exists,
and though vapours look vacant, the vagabond vagrants
                 remain within mythical mists.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching as lightning at midnight in green Spanish eyes
kindles cracks within crystals like flashes from pistols
                 residing inside of the gloom
as it hovers above us betraying a dove as
                 she flees from the fountain of doom.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, distilling despair in her green Spanish eyes,
and the bitterness stings like the snap of the strings
                 when a mystical  mandolin sighs
as the vampire shades **** the life from charades
                 neath the resinous residue skies.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she looks to the ledge with her green Spanish eyes,
for the terrace hangs high and she’s thinking to fly
                 and abandon fate’s merry-go-round.
At the edge I perceive her and rush to retrieve her –
                 she stumbles, falls far to the ground.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the sparkles a’ spilling from green Spanish eyes.
As I peer from the railing, with evening exhaling,
                 I cry out a lover’s lament –
there she lies midst the crowd with her spirit unbowed,
                 but her body’s all broken and bent.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she beckons me hither with green Spanish eyes,
and I’m slightly amazed being snared in her gaze
                 and a’ swirl in a hurricane way,
but the seconds are slipping, my courage is dripping,
                 the moment is bleeding away.

Ah Consuela! I touch her - she weeps tender tears from her green Spanish eyes;
as the breezes cease blowing, her essence leaves, flowing,
                 in streams neath the ambient light,
and the droplets drip swarming, so silent, yet warming,
                 like rain in a midsummer night.

Ah Consuela! I hold her, am hushed by the hints in her green Spanish eyes,
while her whispers are breathing the breaths of the seething
                 electrical skeletal winds,
and the words paint the poems that rivers a’ slowin’
                 reveal where the waterfall ends.

Ah Consuela! I’m fading in fires a’ flicker in green Spanish eyes,
as she plays back the past, she abandons and casts
                 away matters that no longer mend.
           .
                  .
And she reached out instead, as she lifted her head,
                 and we kissed as she parted, my friend.
           .
                  .
                          .
Ah Consuela! I’m tangled, entombed, trapped in tales of your green Spanish eyes,
in forsaken cantinas beyond the arenas
                 where night-time illusions once flowed,
for the ash neath my shoulder still throbs as it smoulders
                 some place near the end of the road.

I hear guitars a’ calling in the gloaming’s final fling
when sinking suns subdue their flames and fairies take to wing
as day departs, a yawning ash, beneath a dusky haze
igniting one by one the jewels of midnight’s diamond blaze.

I hear guitars a’ calling in the clouds within the skies,
with tunes which trill like welling tears from somber misting eyes
of misplaced muted homeless souls who drift alone in grief
beneath the silence of the stars that offers no relief.

I hear guitars a’ calling in the beat beneath her breast;
their murmur throbs with passion’s pulse and sensuous unrest
that rumbles deep in worried woods before impending storms
and splits the air in morning meadows, ere the sunrise warms.

I hear guitars a’ calling in the pitter-patter rain
which summons with a soothing sound upon my window pane
evoking bygone childhood dreams within a vagrant breeze
engulfing me in gusty swirls down misty vortices.

I hear guitars a’ calling in the waves on distant shores;
they’re crashing out a monody upon the mystic oars
of phantom ships within the dawn, like speckled caravels
a’ sail on seas of raven wings to moonlit citadels.

I hear guitars a’ calling in the morning’s reveilles;
they’re pouring fires in the skies and burning up the seas,
while waking flowers in the fields and setting trees ablaze,
and closing one by one the eyes of midnight’s starry gaze.

I hear guitars a’ calling in the deserts of my mind;
they’re nullifying hollow realms that time has left behind,
where pathless sands are blazing hot, the sun is set to die
and weary hounds are panting faint’, their tongues hung long and dry.

Unfold the map of the world and trace
a kaleidoscopic boot-shaped country
rising from the waters lavished by Atlantic
in a multicultural basin at the heart

of a flat globe. The Mediterranean birthed
by the Zanclean deluge, witness of myriad
exoduses intertwining genes to encompass
peninsular cradles of early civilisations,

a medley of ethnicities trading goods
discoveries and ideas on sailing caravels.

Two thousand years later the remnants of
the Roman Empire vote, the democracy
they had co-founded two thousand years
before, on philosophies of justice, equality

and human rights. Power to the people,
lost in the process of history making,
populaces disillusioned and frustrated
at millenary successions of failed rulings

corroborated by corruption and personal
greed of those chosen to represent them.

Today Italians vote anti-establishment
thereby at long last rejecting ideologies
of the past, too old to bare credibility
electing a party set outside the box,

no left right nor centre, victory of populism,
communism and capitalism burned
at stake for their crippling sins albeit
international cold-war renaissance attempts.

Marking the end of the twentieth century
the twenty-first bets on the refreshing breezes
of new tantalising illusions, cuts to public debt,
income of citizenship, youth employment,

tax reductions campaigned to allegedly increase
family spending, for whatever we do we are
all bound by a unique reigning doctrine under
the unified global empire, of consumerism.

The homes are opening up in the mist
like grief of figures
with eyes, opened up to the sea tract.
The walls are crumbling, to this evening
groaning with strength.
Who is shouting there?
Who is building fire on the shore?
The oars were dying of the sweat.
The sails were torn by the winds
dead.
Did they bring ebony and silk,
myrrh and emeralds from Lepanto?
They remained with ashes of the sea,
with corns,
with grief, resembling anchor.
On winding, light-footed caravels
captains are shouting on the deserted shore
and building
Epiphany sacrificial fires.

The original:


Богоявление

Разтварят се в мъглата домовете
подобно скръб на фигури
с очи, разтворени към морска шир.
Изронват се стени, до тази вечер
стенещи от якост.
Кой вика там?
Кой огън пали на брега?
Умираха веслата от потта.
Платната се накъсаха от ветрове
насрещни.
Донесоха ли абанос и свила,
смирна и смарагди от Лепанто?
Останаха със морска прах,
с мазоли,
със скръб, подобно котва.
На вити, леконоги каравели
капитани викат на брега безлюден
и палят
Богоявленски жертвени огньове.

Translator Bulgarian-English: Vessislava Savova
rarebird
© bogpan - all rights reserved.

Time as got by the caravels, is a fluid motion propelling us forward

and in a hopscotch moment, time leapt ahead by one hour of the morning clock.

I am again in the shadow of a church where the dour looks of fanciful figures
carved by loving hands from unforgiving material weigh heavily on my shoulders.

The street sweeper who tells me his name is Stephen stops for a while to whisk a cigarette from the depths of a long tunic.

Another artist to depose other artists.

We talk of change and will the weather hold true, I offer a sip from my flask, he offers one from his, a most wonderful way to open these tired shutters onto an as yet unseen day.

The old lady arrives with cheese and wine, I think she remembers, I think of breakfast, two cards silently placed in her hand and she smiles, later I wondered if I should have intervened and perhaps the impossible task is the only one possible for her day,
the minutes flick my eyes as the sun lifts its own.

But it is still calm for this hour, for this Holy Easter Day.

No children yet to speckle the breast of innocent air,

and no owl today,
I look to where but no hoot from there and I ponder more deeply as the sun rises higher and my body sinks lower.

Soon she wakes too,
'reasons to ask if you care then to answer', she says.
I have no answer to answer and stay silent.

A kiss on the Rose of her lips
as we are and become two ships sliding fluidly across an ocean of time.

Muteness creates sounds, warning perils
as hyenas shrewdly approach shelters,
expressing needs of thirst and hunger
when lands run dry and fruits perish,

chanting instincts sparked by seasons
eliciting mating overtures inspired,
drawing pictures on cave walls
to indelibly report, leave a legacy

of human exploits, enduring struggles,
nascent cultures and traditions,
storytelling striving to be faithful
to a truth the only known, evolving

to engender words made of letters
placed in devised orders to confess
thoughts and feelings, exchange concepts
and ideas, bring minds closer to reflect

upon the myriad marvels of a world yet
to be discovered. Eclipses. Crafting caravels
designing maps, recording wonders
encountered in search of an end, a limit

where it all began, keeping Captain’s log
fearing the monsters of the unknown,
tornados and typhoons a presage
of death inducing mortals to call

for mercy upon immortal gods,
fantastically explaining what reason is unable
to decipher. Singing songs to raise moral
until bashing locutions begin to bless

far more than slaps and blades, hanging ropes,
lightning and storms, using them to hurt
with intentions turned malicious, ingenious
communicative talents drowning

in oceans of wickedness and shame, leading
man to regret to have ever invented words
in the first place, leaving me with just one
sound of indwelling grief, a sigh, succumbing

tuning back to muteness.