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  • Five Songs from Bulgaria

Five Songs from Bulgaria

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2011, revised 2015
13 minutes
32 pages
​Poetry by Andrea Dreier

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​On Tsar Osvoboditel 
to Nezavisimost 
I fly to certain freedom 
in a yellow taxi 
that drives
faster 
than 
memories. 

I am still drunk. 
Vitosha is black behind the city. 
I feel her there, 
crushing my chest 
as I speak of the promise 
I 
have 
broken. 

It ends with 
a midnight walk 
alone 
back to Ivan 
and the Old Mountain 
we 
call 
home. 

Sallow skin and reckless insults 
cast to the crumbling pavement below 
are lost in this broken city. 
Brick layered upon brick, 
metal and concrete 
swallow their sound. 
They cannot resist. 
They cannot forgive.  

When I sink into the earth 
and my feet cannot find the ground above, 
and my arms cannot catch the autumn fog 
thick with all my memories, 
I can taste your breath around me, 
sweet, 
soft. 

When I sink into the earth, 
and the moon shouts to me a warning, 
and the godless night surrounds me, 
begging for my touch, 
I can hear the crickets singing:
laugh, 
lust. 

When I sink into the earth, 
and April rains upon my heart, 
I am standing buried in 
the broken promises of March.

​If
I lay and faced
the February sky,
I would feel you there
in the wind,
frozen
and stinging
my fingers.
The rush of sorrow
comes,
the sunlight
fades.
I breathe you in. 
​If 
I could believe 
in spring, 
we would 
sit in the grass 
near the lilacs. 
You would 
never tell the truth 
and 
I would 
not look at you hands 
or the blooming hyacinth.

​In the smoky cafes of Samoranovo
sit the old and the drunk,
with breakfast of beer and coffee,
A mangy dog paces the Ploshtad,
hungry and alone.
He fights for his food,
fights the boys who throw rocks at him.
The barmaid pours rakia
and remembers the days
when it was warm inside
and she did not sleep alone.

​© James Wilding 2025. All content owned or used with permission.
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