The door

One day you’ll see:

you’ve been knocking on a door

without a house.

You’ve been waiting, shivering, yelling

words of daring and hope.

 

One day you’ll see:

there is no-one on the other side

except, as ever, the jubilant ocean

that won’t shatter ceramically like a dream

when you and I shatter.

 

But not yet. Now

you wait outside, watching

the blue arches of mornings

that will break

but are now perfect.

 

Underneath on tip-toe

pass the faces, speaking to you,

saying ‘you’, ‘you’, ‘you’,

smiling, waving, arriving

in unfailing chronology.

 

One day you’ll doubt your movements,

you will shudder

at the accuracy of your sudden age.

You will ache for slow beauty

to save you from your quick, quick life.

 

But not yet. Hope

fills the yawn of time.

Blue surrounds you. Now let’s say

you see a door and knock,

and wait for someone to hear.

 

Kapka Kassabova

Someone Else’s Life

It was a day of slow fever
and roses in the doorway, wrapped
in yesterday’s news of death.

Snow fell like angels’ feathers
from a dark new sky, softly announcing
that some things would never be the same.

I listened carefully to doubts and revisions
of someone else’s life, safe in my room of tomorrow,
a passing witness to sorrow and wonder.

Then night came and I was quickly
drifting inside that life. I was leaving mine.
Snowflakes continued to fall.

The street was deserted and dim.
Shrapnel wounds blossomed in stone walls.
There was no proof of the current decade,

and I could not recall
the names of faces that I knew
the smell of places where I’d lived

and why I lay alone now
so close to a vast, empty floor, so far
from the sun, so far.

Kapka Kassabova

Lying with Berlin Ghosts

Tonight is the longest night of the year.
We lie, patient with the seasons
in the glow of street lamps,
beneath the outlines of things
that could be ours, some other time.
To the sound of snow falling,
we must sleep, again and again
like diving into the soft centre
of each life we might have had.
Yesterday was the shortest day of the year -
a pale wing that beat just once
then fell into the twilight of three o’clock.
The snow has settled. We can hear it breathe.
I say we but I see no one.
The neighbour upstairs has gone skiing.
The people across have turned off the light
in their room. The rest of the street is a museum.
I lie on the slab of my bed, whispering:
Whoever else is here now
will be here tomorrow.
They are measuring the beats
of my remaining blood.
They quietly know something
I am afraid to ask.

Kapka Kassabova