Song
Only for love, did your mother bear you,
Not for my heart to set your snares
This very day let’s love, my darling
What good’s tomorrow and its cares?
Allow me to mix my burning kisses
With murmuring your lovely name.
Please don’t use these vile pretences
To bind my heart in servile shame.
My heart’s a bird, not easily caught.
Here today: tomorrow gone.
But in every flowering bush and briar,
She leaves a magic wondrous song.
Kiril Christov
Beyond help
She was so very tender as if the air
And light shone through her and each day
She grew more pale. I trembled, didn’t dare
Think what could have happened with me…
Night-time she didn’t sleep and when the dawning
Brightened our windows with its beams,
She closed her eyes to stop the morning
Chasing away her dizzy dreams.
She was a string ’neath my caresses
Careless in laughing and crying hours.
She lived her life only on kisses,
The songs we sang and the scent of flowers.
But with powers quite unspeakable,
This girl, so fragile she could not stay,
Broke my strength I thought unbreakable
And like a wild bird flew away.
Kiril Christov
translation by Christopher Buxton