CLERK

web | Bravado

Everybody knows - he
secretly writes poems.
Even, rumor has it,
he has published some.
But he doesn't talk poetry with anybody.
Sometimes his muse would come to him,
squeaking with her wooden leg.
The handicapped woman is so beautiful
that any man would start howling
after her and the old tricky
life, that wouldn't let you have
even a try-out.

The woman that had the most tantalizing legs
in the neighborhood...
once upon a time...
The most impregnable woman
to all men in the neighborhood,
(not to mention the clerk).
And now a wounded soul
is seeking the kindred soul
of a poet.

They share a bottle of wine
in very slow sips. No talk.
They know: soon she'll be
a voyager.

The clerk will get a sheet of paper
and she'll start running upon it again
with her heels cheerfully clattering.
Men will brake their necks
after her, and she'll be walking,
so mesmerizingly as if advertizing:
I'm nobody's!
She'll be walking and walking...
It will never change,
until
she gets off the sheet
back to life
in never-never land.

© Maxim Maximov
© Bojidara Pavlova, translated from Bulgarian
=============================
© LiterNet Publishing House, 23.02.2021
Maxim Maximov. Bravado. Varna: LiterNet, 2021

Other publications:
Maxim Maximov. Bravado. Los Angeles: Triumvirate Publications, 1999.