...the swarm of rays buzzed...
2025-01-13 15:04:47
Sunflowers, firecrackers in a trance
on the embers of the heat.
Sunflowers, wrinkled, shriveled,
coal images of old icons
in an altar devastated by invaders.
You will remain sunflowers
now and forever and ever.
And each one bears a brand
on his forehead, a bleeding brand
of a martyr for the faith.
If only you were prickly cacti,
somehow - you would survive
in the impenetrable hedgehog skins.
And you would suck hard
drop by drop the last juices
from your native dying soil.
* * *
Sunflowers basked in the sun.
At harvest noon - a sacrificial rite
of self-immolation for love.
Do you sprinkle your head with ashes,
or in a farewell bow kiss
the hot cinder of the fallow fields
following the footsteps of your idol?
Did you reach into the solar hive,
with a black eye,
so that the swarm of rays buzzed and stung?
And somewhere in the wasteland
a lone sunflower,
forgotten in the stubble,
staring at the sunset,
so battered
that it itself is stained in the sun
from a child's drawing,
pecked by magpies,
pockmarked, grinning all over
with a smile - a grimace of crying.
Why did the drought spare you?
Sunflowers, golden compasses in the fields.
Many Summers...
----------------------------
poem "Sunflowers" -1985
Blaga Dimitrova- Summer, Dobrudzha, Bulgaria
Blaga Nikolova Dimitrova (1922-2003) was a Bulgarian writer and literary critic.
