TOMORROW’S BREAD
Once I reproached my son
because he did not know
where to buy bread.
And now...
now he is selling bread
in America.
In Washington.
In his daytime routine
he teaches at the university.
At night he writes poetry.
But on Saturdays and Sundays
he sells bread
on the corner of Nebraska and Connecticut.
The fields of Bulgaria are empty.
Those women of the earth who used to
reap the crops to feed the
generations,
are fading away like the notes of a dying song.
Politicians set up the melodrama:
“Who filched the wheat of the motherland?!”
But what lies between bread and man
remains
hidden behind the several names,
different in taste and different in price.
My son sells bread for sandwiches,
rosemary buns, olive rolls,
“Zaatar” loaves, Spanish sesame “Semolina,”
walnut bread, wheat bread, sprinkled
with raisins,
Italian “Pane Bello.”
“Palladin,” kneaded with olive oil, with yeast and milk,
corn bread, pumpkin seed bread,
Turkish bread, bread made of clouds…
Only Bulgarian bread is not
available,
nor the leftover bread from
yesterday!
“Some bread remains unsold
every day,” my son says.
“We are given a loaf for dinner.
The rest is wrapped in plastic bags
and dumped…”
Weariness weighs on my son.
The bread has handed him an American dream
(And this, too, means The American Dream)
Oh God, don’t you hear? My son is praying for something!
Danger encircles him like an aura.
Give me the answer, Lord, to one single prayer—
to one last wish,
then do, please, whatever my son asks of you.
And sure, you might as well adopt
him!
In Sofia
the shades of old women
scour the dark.
Ransacking the rubbish bins they collect bread.
Pointing at one of them, a teacher
of history and Bulgarian language,
they say:
“Don’t jump to conclusions, take it
easy!
She’s not taking the bread for
herself. She feeds
stray dogs
and birds.”
And my words too are food for dogs
and birds.
Oh God!
Why am I alive?
Why do I wander alone in the
Rhodopes?
Why do I gaze down abandoned wells?
Why do I dig into caves where people
lie?
And pass the night in sacred places,
renounced by you?
I am seeking the way
to the last magician’s hideout,
he who forgot to die
but has not forgotten the secret of
bread.
Not today’s bread, which is for
sale,
not yesterday’s bread which has been
dumped…
I must know the secret of tomorrow’s
bread.
The bread our lips will touch in
awe.
The bread that takes our children by
the hand
and leads them all back home.
Translated
into English by Jack Harte
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