Trajan is a huge column with a great many reliefs

hewn from the earth and wound in a spiral

a will to glory or a will to something perhaps

because the senses only know what they encounter

they revolve on their axis — vividly or unexpectedly

in conflict with themselves, better than themselves.

Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to come up with the ‘number’ concept

it only needs one application

and now everything appears identical, reversible, transferable

and forms relate to each other like numbers.

Perfect being! Every other being is behind you on three counts:

action, aim and excellence.

And no state should be destroyed without need!

Trajan isn’t mentioned in ‘The Second Book of Dialectics’ of 1556

which notes that since the past is infinite

and the future is infinite

and since we are equally placed between infinite distance

and infinite proximity

nobody lives in a certain place on a certain day.

Not long before the start three figures appear — one huge,

one that sang when they put him in prison

and one entirely worked from the three-star hotels

of public security and, naturally, still standing.

And these three figures, unlikely freaks, but quite true,

quite credible, though sometimes downright impossible

never mind most think them symbolic

banded together somehow, around September 6th

surely because they were reading alone, without a dog to fawn on

or because they were killing time, trying dark pleasures

no, they weren’t pulling faces, they’d come to realize something

nothing fixed, of course, they just imagined things that way.

The world they could portray wasn’t the real one

not that they saw things in two dimensions or brought in anything extra -

in their free time and the shadow of logic (or at least

as they grasped hospitality’s logic)

either bearers of mirrors or enchanters of horses

when they caught them behind The Spit (even Ronsard hadn’t heard of it) —

they merely thought that a body remains in the state it finds itself in

until it changes it, not wordiness, but a dangerous eloquence

when elsewhere presence itself speaks eloquently.

But, still, before this they secretly leafed through The Iliad

(it had been forgotten about at the time)

and the tiles above their heads leaked (but not with golden rain)

and the cold drove them out of the attic, without fur coats

and while the Strandzha oak creaked beneath their feet

they went and wrote a dirty poem on the wall

(as the one who appears at the end says)

which was a dreadful mistake, of course,

and made them feel blue, horribly blue

and because of that they sat down and got drunk.

She stood upright, casually leaning

on the altar of Samokov Metropolitan Church 

(the icons painted by Zachary Zograf’s brother also stood)

as only those few she’d invited to lunch

at the Convent of the Dormition knew her,

in a white robe, elegant (strangely forbidding to some)

and even a little provoking;

she was holding a notebook, but not with rough pages,

smooth like those bandied around in the temples of Rhodes,

full of lists of names — survivors of shipwrecks

(before the time Ivan Patev searched Metropolitan Docitej’s archive 

hidden in a bureau behind the church’s altar)

in fact she was intent on having fun and no wonder that she wrote nothing down

it seems someone was waiting

clearly she intended finishing the job before day’s end,

which hurled those unused to work into turmoil.

She half-closed her eyes as if

tracing with her fingertip a choice contour of the body

losing it, catching it carved in the columns of the palace

carried by the voice of the wind:

this performance — her beauty

The marble floor cut shadow into squares

setting her

in the sharp mosaic sound of violas

One way or another she took a step towards the lighted pilaster

to measure how much remained

before the horizon — the other figure emerges or hides

in full view

An appearance

whose fate Christina Vasileva was singing

because, consider a moment, how different life is around you

when the birds fly straight up

strangely, the voice sounded on hunters’ horns

strange that it’s not here

He had lost his lyre

and when it should be done

the libation to a god

he said ‘without me’

He confused the Choephori with Euripides

and left

drunk with grief.

The Hippodrome in Constantinople is hushed.

Cries of Christ’s soldiers

die away in the spoils.

Villehardouin said of Dandolo.

The four horses swam across the sea

and stopped motionless in front of the church

The gondolas, the gondolas are sinking

peeled chestnuts spilt across the surface of the sea

a bouquet of roses in a silver vase

a thousand gold rings on the floor of the Adriatic

a tear on the sculptures of Lyssipos —

in the eyes of the immortals

and in your eyes, Achilles …

Martino da Canale with numb hands.

 

Lying on this earth that isn’t mine,

I hear its distant rumble from the depths,

a low rumble, drumming rhythm,

a small bird crosses the sky above me

keeping the form for flight hidden

somewhere in its being

Oh, God, pray for a world beyond the world

of those evolved from monkeys and the beauty

of the shapeless mass and stern square.

The governor’s palace at the end of the green

avenue in Williamsburg

the windmill with old ship’s sails

its stretched wings

the woman with bare shoulders and a skirt stretched over her hips

memory and desire

birth new thoughts, new things,

unformed things, but already drawn out of nothing,

things hanging from the golden chain between the earth

and this obelisk, which is the tallest measure on this earth

on which I lie and is neither mine nor yours

or as much mine as yours

in front of his house empty and vacant

with nine white marble columns

and three black columns, vacant columns, columns of the empty house

and the roar of a plane’s firing engines

that’s just taken off from the airport.

Basket weavers, gardeners, kite-flyers,

we are puppets at the feet of a poor travelling artist

sole owner of the past,

three openings, two small at the side for hands,

one larger for the head in the middle,

the slave market’s empty, the openings too,

we were there and then we left,

we left for the ocean to set sail, to forget

that we’ve discovered a new continent

to turn back time.

Everything looks so familiar and unexpected

Everything the eyes see and ears hear

flocks of ravens, seagulls, ducks

olive-green heads, yellow beaks, orange feet

do you see how the shadows jump under water,

they pull in towards the university towers in leaps and bounds

now, when it’s four in the afternoon

and you saw the clock tower for the first time today

clouds all day and quiet splashes of water

a silver sun and a silver disc in the water

where the rowers’ voices sound

when a blue sky rolls above me

wedged between the memorial’s white columns

now, when everything that

you see and hear isn’t enough

go back over the ocean again

to friends coming out of the House of Film

to her grandparents picking autumn grapes

dead faces cover the banks of the Potomac

a time that’s not of this world

a place without an exit

three moons, three birds

black fiery Spanish beauty

of a past that’s always the same

monumental

head

in the sculpture garden

a nobody’s head

vacant with the total calm of the dead

full of their days and deeds

this grief that’s born of the desire

to understand others, to understand oneself

through what connects us now

the woman sitting with legs stretched to one side

knees bent

the truncated cone tilts the severed head to the left

two parallel lines end in hemispheres

a cube

a blue vane measures the sculpture’s time

the sound of a little water brings the garden to life

a fountain with eight yellow-green leaves in it

one foot deep

nymphs and toothed jaws

a bird takes off from the head of a gryphon

a blank page is no longer a police siren

a distant traffic rumble

over the river which only disturbs itself

the hand placed to the side

a hand, embracing the head of the prone naked woman

hands in chains

and the drowning sun grins

from the bottom, with algae around its silver cheeks

bronze, black flеsh, a wild urge to conquer

the apeman’s stopped outside the White House

with a swollen stomach, broad shoulders, short legs

the fountains have dried up

The view to the north is white

even the letters can’t be read

the policeman on duty is hungover, sleeps

The old post office sends white letters

to long defunct addresses

the people have died, the houses decayed

and the streets now leave in different directions

alone, 1751 stands out

by Barnes & Noble’s hypermodern bookstore

the sun south of the river

sinks into brass sheets, here in the footsteps of Adam and Eve

I stand a warrior with shield and sword next to me

I sit a noisy, slippery fox beside me

I wait for the first man

I point a camera at a man’s hand

to photograph it amongst these sculptures

An iron bed with ornaments, a bowl without water

and a corpse in front of the mirror which can’t see itself

Veronese tendrils unwind letters across blue-grey marble

Veronese paths, Veronese avenues

along which José Artigas, José de San Martin arrive in the present

on a cold day in a cold time

their dark names survive too

a time when there was no one to meet them

and take them to the Willard Hotel

to bring back the celebration of freedom.

The ocean roars like a rolling skull.

The British Empire rests on rolling stones

just as far as the squirrel’s tail’s runs.

(After the Assassination of Abraham Lincolnhewas taken across the street to Petersen House. After remaining in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15.

Since 1933, the National Park Service has maintained it as a historical museum, recreating the scene at the time of Lincoln’s death)

Note by the translator and poet, Tom Phillips: Given what’s happening in the UK at the moment, and indeed elsewhere in Europe and North America, the final lines of these last three poems by Ivo Hadzhiyski —  ‘The British Empire lies on rolling stones/just as far as the end of a squirrel’s tail’ — have a particular resonance. This pertinence — much like that of the line ‘dead faces cover the banks of the Potomac’ — is not the end of the story, however, and while politics and history are made felt through his responses to encounters on what he memorably refers to as ‘this earth that isn’t mine’, what’s also apparent here is a continual and fruitful engagement with the actually existing details — the temporary and the enduring, the seemingly banal and the aesthetic, the forms pulled out of formlessness. These are poems about finding a shape in the world — no matter how baffling that shape might turn out to be — and about the role of art in such a process. We are acutely aware of a specific mind at work here. The connections which, at first, might appear startling emerge into significance as the poet repeatedly interrogates the margin between sensed experience, thought and all that might have come before. These poems are full of striking images and a clear, but erudite understanding of language and how it might relate to ‘the shapeless mass and stern square’, not to mention an engaging intertextuality, that keeps us, as readers, on our toes and helps us understand the grids and networks through which we perceive the world.