Poems by Zhivka Ivanova
From her anthology Tuesday is Green published by Faber 2011
Translated by Christopher Buxton
Day and Night
Like a shiny beetle smeared
on the pavement
the day softly darkens
under footfall of the hours;
your silence
loses its spark –
it doesn’t stab me every time
when my telephone turns
deaf and dumb.
Again the dark slips on
its black overcoat,
but I pin
white solitude in my hair
so I can dance barefoot
across
the well beaten dance floor
of our love.
Drama of stairs and two people
It’s not my gift
to unravel the words,
to cast them higgledy piggeldy
into a rolled up ball
and later to discover
in its deepest centre the end
of the thread, and in one sharp tug,
disentangle them.
But I can illuminate them:
so I see how
my slimmed-down balcony
nightly gathers up
the violet quiet,
but at daybreak turns it
to a pale pink murmur,
with which it partners the sea.
And I know that the roof
is cross with me,
I haven’t treated it in years,
and it no longer talks to me,
only in the autumn,
it softly weeps.
The walls are scolding me
every day and litter me
with cobwebs,
and the kitchen floor
has a screw loose,
but the stairs –
they quietly play jazz,
when they feel us,
stepping together in a hug..
Tuesday is green
I say that Tuesday is green,
and my brother insists, that it’s yellow,
and we argue to bright red,
Mummy enters, shimmering blue,
(Mummy is always a glow of blue,
but Daddy is a warm orange),
reads us a story, so it pales to white.
but some of the words are so vivid.
that I want to repeat them,
till my world turns upside down;
when it starts to turn grey about me
I know that it’ll get bad,
the doctor who told Mummy,
that they had to send us
to the psychiatric clinic,
was froggy, dark grey,
while the other, orange, like Daddy
insisted that it was simply
synesthesia
In love
She walks
and her thighs sing,
and her breasts,
doves with pink beaks,
flutter in rhythm,
and join in chorus,
the wind plays
the harp in her hair,
men’s beaming looks
are reflected
in her mouth, strawberry,
they plait her halo
she walks
and doesn’t even realize
that she’s a heavenly
orchestra.
The Sea
The beach got sick
from mistrust –
categorically refused
to be the sea’s
favourite lollipop,
sprouted a rash
of drinking dives,
cheap tunes,
fag buts
and empty coffee cups.
Baffled, the sea
Withdrew a tide’s length,
But then continued
To kiss
so tenderly,
so painfully,
because this was
the only beach
to be had.
Without it
There’d be no sea.
“Life’s a fragile pact”
“Life’s a fragile pact”
No, I didn’t make this up –
The quote just slid off the screen
And I seized on it:
It smelled of fine tobacco
which agreed with your lips,
which agreed with my lips.
It smelled of sea breeze,
Which agreed with your hands
Which agreed with my hands.
Finally it smelled of eternity
Which agreed with your body
Which agreed with my body,
When they touched.
Good and bad
Do you realise how I don’t want
to play the goody,
for you to water me out of pity
and duty like that
lousy flower in the pot,
forgotten on the margins
of your glowing eyes
when you dream of the bad!
I want, I want…you not to scrawl
Red biro
Over piles of tests
And my attention seeking!
I want, I want…to leave
my socks on the sofa
and a wound in your tender soul,
when you wait up for me till late!
I want, I want…to not use
the bloody flipflops in the bathroom,
condoms and the grey
pleasantries after bed-time!
I want, I want…to con you,
that you’re protected, and when I withdraw
Watch you how you cope
squeamish and sweet…
I want to be that baddy,
determined at any price,
even if you don’t want it
to be
Daddy!