Bulgaria

From the city where stray dogs roam the streets in packs,
You head for Mount Vitosha’s pure water and fresh breezes,
Where the air is plum brandy that goes to your head,
And you witness the centuries as if you had lived through them.
St George rides the white steed, St Dimitar the red,
And the Thracian horseman lifts his spear and takes aim
To slay the serpent and deliver the kingdom from famine.
Bad omens appear in a bowl of water, in the clouds;
The villagers mark the new house’s foundations with blood;
Come, brother, scatter coins and wheat around the hearth.
I have seen the Arabic inscription on a Turkish fountain:
He who looks upon me and drinks my water
Shall possess the light of the eyes and of the soul.

At the Seven Lakes of the Rila Mountains the Danovisti
Gather on the shore to dance and worship the August sun;
Red, white and black is the bloom of Rila Monastery,
Angelic arches leaping like dolphins out at sea,
Stairways ascending to the balconies’ efflorescence,
And the mountains sombre and mysterious behind,
As you walk along the frescoes of Apocalypse and Hell,
Studying there the rich men quaffing wine around a table,
Ignoring the pleas of a begging leper whose thin legs
Are being gnawed by hungry dogs, while bat-winged demons
Flit about the fallen world, and over ruined Constantinople.
St John’s bones glow supernal within these precincts,
Blessing the true seeker who would heal himself and find
What always was closer than life’s tormented illusion,
If only one would dare to climb into the secret cave.

When will you journey to the Pirin Mountains,
To run free in the winds and storms of the Slavic god?
There you will drink the tarns’ pure water and receive
Prophecies of the world’s destiny, in rocks and trees,
Where healing wildflowers bloom briefly in high valleys,
And glacial cirques gleam azure among granite crags.
In you, too, is the seer, the healer, the chosen one,
Moving at will through the insubstantial world,
Reuniting the separated, and mending the broken.

Near the source of the River Madera, high on the cliff face
Looms the great bas-relief of the horseman, his mount
Trampling a lion, with his faithful greyhound at hand,
While in one hand he clutches a cup of wine;
His horse speaks in the language of the Underworld,
Addressing the dead with messages of comfort,
While the fields and orchards bloom with plenty,
Reborn out of bones and blood, out of worship,
And the sacred spring bubbles up from darkness
In the cave of saints, the martyr’s precious wound.
See them come, the Thracians, galloping across the plain,
Great archers and equestrians, tattooed with sacred signs,
Burning hemp seeds to inhale the narcotic smoke,
Dreaming of the land of heroes beyond the mountains,
Practising the Mysteries in ecstatic illumination,
Dying to be reborn, in the proud-breasted Goddess’s embrace,
Surrounded by their wives, their dogs and horses.
At the Thracian necropolis at Sveshtari, in the tomb,
The king and queen lay on stone couches, accompanied
By the horses, to ride together in the afterlife still,
Watched over by the mother goddess who offers
The mounted horseman in the fresco a hero’s wreath.
Elswehere, in another tomb, the painted dome looks down,
With procession of horses and servants approaching
The chieftain seated at the banqueting table, while his wife
Reposes on a throne beside him, face downcast in mourning,
Touching his hand in a tender gesture of farewell,
And the goddess extends to the dead man a bowl of fruit.
Racing chariots wheel around the apex oft the dome,
Celebrating the funerary games, with ecstatic exultation,
While the priests conduct great sacrifices and rituals,
Calling on the gods to protect and guide their lord.


Through shimmering heat haze on the Dobrudzha Plain,
I scan the parched barren steppe with dazzled eyes,
Thinking for a a moment that another barbarian horde
Is emerging out of the east, advancing on horseback
To conquer an empire, then find, to their dismay,
These badlands the hardest frontier to defend,
No man’s land of bandits, brigands and raiders.
So came the Bulgars, sweeping in from the Turkic steppe,
Shouting war-cries and appeals to their forefathers,
Their shamans urging them on in the language of birds,
People of the wolf, dancing under the red moon.

The smell of blood mingles with attar of roses,
And bagpipes and drums strike up for the feast
As firewalkers fall into trance and dance on hot embers;
The hesychast ascends the Mount of Transfiguration;
The Bogomil tears the mask from the bishop’s face
And stares into Satan’s eyes, the world’s corruption.
And so it was when the Turks massacred and enslaved,
And made serfs and beggars of a proud people,
Forcing them to kiss the sabre, and kneel before Allah,
And kidnapped young boys for the janissary corps,
And pillaged and destroyed precious monasteries,
And raped and robbed, cheated, and oppressed.
But in the Balkans’ fastness, in villages and monasteries,
Proud courageous spirits preserved the nation in trust,
Awaiting the day of deliverance, the justice of God.

They live among us, hellish fiends in human form,
Vampires that rise from their graves each night,
To feed off farmers’ flocks, and prey upon mortals,
Sucking their life-blood, leaving them listless and ill;
The vampire hunter, clairvoyant scion of werewolves,
Whose eyes could scry vampires among the crowd,
Hunts the evil spirit to bay with an icon held aloft,
Tricking it into a bottle, then throwing it onto a fire;
Or he spies out the creature’s grave in the churchyard,
The icon’s trembling showing him the dread spot
Where he must dig, ready with the hawthorn stake
To impale the monster’s heart, and burn its corpse.

You will walk in the Rhodope Mountains, listening
For panpipes’ eerie lilt, among rugged gorges and caves,
Dense pine forests and alpine pastures, where lizards
Lick the air’s vibrations, and bluebirds flash among the rocks,
While hawks and eagles ride the sky’s great hymn.
The Trigrad Gorge’s sheer walls overhang foaming river,
Disappearing into the stupendous cave, its hoarse cascade
Vanishing into the earth’s maw, into the Underworld,
And anything swept down there is never seen again;
Inside the cave, bats flit around the shaft of light admitted
By a fissure far above, here where Orpheus himself descended,
To find his beloved wife and bring her back into the light,
For why, if his lyre could so sway the enchanted earth,
Should it not also conquer Hades, conquer death itself?
Do you not hear him singing laments for lost Eurydice
As he wanders the mountains, bereft, cursing his own folly?
See, the maenads are even now tearing his body apart,
And his head, still singing, floats downriver to distant Lesbos,
To prophesy ever after to his priests and followers,
That they might free their souls from world and flesh.