Novella
The windows – shut tight and blackened,
And blackened and shut tight, the door,
And the door bears the fluttering message
“The owner has gone to America.”
And I am the home’s only owner
Where nobody’s made his abode
And I’ve set out for nowhere
And from nowhere I’ve returned
I never take a step from my house
And the years are my only visitors,
But so often the gardens have yellowed,
And I’m certainly not the same chap.
All the books have been read long ago
And all memory’s paths have been trampled
And how here as if for a hundred years
I talk exclusively to the portraits.
And day and night and night and day the clock
Swings its brass sun pendulum.
Occasionally I pose before the mirror
So as not to be always alone.
And my days slowly climb the walls
In the flicker of dying embers:
My life passes away without a trace
Of a single love or incident
It’s as if I’ve never lived at all
And my existence is an evil fantasy.
If someone happens to enter the house,
They’ll find nobody in.
They’ll only see the dusty portraits,
The perfidious empty mirror
And on the door a yellowing message:
“The owner has gone to America.”
Atanas Dalchev 1925
