Cveta Mihaylova

“If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“But you I want to look at until your face fades from my fear, like a bird stepping away from the sharp edges of night. — Alejandra Pizarnik, trans. by Yvette Siegert, from “Paths of the Mirror,” Extracting the Stone of Madness (New Directions; Bilingual edition, May 17, 2016)”
― Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

“Paths of the mirror"

I
And above all else, to look with innocence. As if nothing was happening, which is true.

II
But you, I want to look at you until your face escapes from my fear like a bird from the sharp
edge of the night.

III
Like a girl made of pink chalk on a very old wall that is suddenly washed away by the rain.

IV
Like when a flower blooms and reveals the heart that isn’t there.

V
Every gesture of my body and my voice to make myself into the offering,
the bouquet that is abandoned by
the wind on the porch.

VI
Cover the memory of your face with the mask of who you will be and scare the girl you once were.

VII
The night of us both scattered with the fog. It’s the season of cold foods.

VIII
And the thirst, my memory is of the thirst, me underneath, at the bottom, in the hole,
I drank, I remember.

IX
To fall like a wounded animal in a place that was meant to be for revelations.

X
As if it meant nothing. No thing. Mouth zipped. Eyelids sewn. I forgot.
Inside, the wind. Everything closed and the wind inside.

XI
Under the black sun of the silence the words burned slowly.

XII
But the silence is true. That’s why I write. I’m alone and I write. No, I’m not alone.
There’s somebody here shivering.

XIII
Even if I say sun and moon and star I’m talking about things that happen to me. And what did I wish for? I wished for a perfect silence.
That’s why I speak.

XIV
The night is shaped like a wolf’s scream.

XV
Delight of losing one-self in the presaged image. I rose from my corpse, I went looking for who I am.
Migrant of myself, I’ve gone towards the one who sleeps in a country of wind.

XVI
My endless falling into my endless falling where nobody waited for me –because when I saw who was waiting for me I saw no one but myself.

XVII
Something was falling in the silence. My last word was “I” but I was talking about the luminiscent dawn.

XVIII
Yellow flowers constellate a circle of blue earth. The water trembles full of wind.

XIX
The blinding of day, yellow birds in the morning. A hand untangles the darkness, a hand drags
the hair of a drowned woman that never stops going through the mirror. To return to the memory of the body,
I have to return to my mourning bones, I have to understand what my voice is saying.”
― Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972