Time is a man

Time is the golden penny
of an aristocrat with a cane –

the old bloke, who writes nights
in his office.
he keeps a clock inside himself,
measures
hundreds and more –
autopsies under the magnifying glass of the dead.
Time’s cut up with a sword,
little man, a nailed coffin
out of female non-attendance –
vengeance has scarred the wood
of today’s
mask of impotence.
And look – today
you take vengeance for someone’s dying,
but no! Death requires sex,
and afterwards you breast feed
an old man dying in the words
of what’s not written by him Yesterday.
And look – he’s in his office
with cane propped into the wood
and writes words in the soot:
“Time is a man,
woman is not yet born”

Michaela Angelova

Translation: Christopher Buxton

The English translation of the poem has been published first in the book New Social Poetry – The Anthology (CreateSpace 2018).

Michaela Angelova is a young Bulgarian poet who had her debut recently in the journal New Social Poetry. This is the first poem by her that has been translated into English. 

Christopher Buxton graduated in English and American literature at the University of Kent. He first came to Bulgaria in 1977 as an English teacher in Burgas. He has had two novels published in Bulgaria, Far from the Danube and Prudence and the Red Baron and has also written a number of articles for Vagabond Magazine on contemporary Bulgarian social, cultural and political issues. Some of his translations of Bulgarian classic literary texts can be found on his blog. They include stories by Yovkov and Elin Pelin, poetry by Kiril Christov, Ivan Vazov, Vladimir Bashev, and Christo Fotev. He has recently published two books with the poetry of Peyo Yavorov and Dimcho Debelyanov and an anthology with classical Bulgarian poems in his own translation. He is a committee member of the British Bulgarian Friendship Society. Together with his wife, he is running Black Sea Oleander Press, a small independent publishing house.

Photo credit: Christopher Buxton

This blog post is part of #BulgarianLiteratureMonth.