Sofia is rich in rivers, although there are no ships and boats sailing on them. We talked about them one evening with the poet, journalist and ecoactivist Dimiter Kenarov. What is it like to go up (or down) stream along one of these rivers? Is there still romance in their waters? What do Sofia’s rivers tell us, and is there intelligible speech left in their babble? Dimiter tried to answer these and other questions, and a memory of this evening is the poem “Down the Canal”, which we are publishing as part of our focus Art and Environment.
Down the Canal
(for Linda and Nadya)
1.
Drive down the Canal, I tell the cabby,
and he only nods silently and exhales
cigarette smoke in the already smog-
filled air of Sofia. He has fully grasped
my meaning without considering
the words. I get him. When you live
in a privy, what choice do you have
but to get used to the smell? A question
of survival, some may say. If you stare
long enough at a stone wall, it turns
transparent. The apartment blocks
vanish, the plastic bags caught in
the branches vanish, the faces
of politicians, even the baby with
cerebral palsy vanishes, including
the entire city of two-million people,
just like in a horror flick, in which
the worst is invisible to the eyes. But
(here’s the rub) also the prettiest.
The blade of the knife gradually dulls
and you can’t cut yourself, you can’t slice
off your pinky, but neither can you cut into
the sweet June tomato. A dearth of blood
inevitably turns into a dearth of juice.
2.
The gypsy kids are frolicking in the Canal
in their swimming trunks and then lie down
to bask in the sun on the concrete bank, as if
on the Canaries. I wonder if they’ve shut
their eyes, just like the rest of the city, or
on the contrary, they boast the most tenacious
imagination, seeing a metaphor in each object?
Invisible, buried in the c-section scar of Sofia,
they are born for a second life, every day
sliding through the infected canal pipe.
3.
Down the Canal, I say, but sometimes,
when I walk on foot in the summer day
and the chestnuts have unfurled their
secession leaves and the lindens spray
their French perfume in the plastic air,
I remember this is the Perlovska river,
where, I’ve heard, they used to pan gold
in the past, and the cattle would come
down at dusk to drink, like in a Constable.
I don’t wish to romanticize – I’m aware
people of every century destroy
their world so they can dream on its
ruins – but nevertheless it’s pleasant
to recall that the stone rivers of Vitosha
are still giving birth to water, which babbles
in thousands of languages and enters our
dreams, in spite of the inverse, stone-like
logic of engineers and city officials.
4.
To track down the source, to make visible
the springs of the tongue: this may be
the task of the poets. To translate the reader
not across the river, from one bank to the other,
like Charon carrying the souls of the dead
given the proper payment, but to go against
the current, upwards, where even in June
shards of pearly snow still glow white on
Vitosha, between the double Reznyov peaks.
Linda, Nadya, lead me on, show me the way.
Here, I give you my almost human hand.