Won`t the snow come down from the sky
like a shining white angel
at least once
to whiten the iron gutters,
to cover the asphalt boulevards?
- I dont`t think it will.
In this city, black as charcoal,
the winter will probably be back, too,
and we shall never know the angels and the snow.
And if the snow does come one day
policemen and prostitutes
will trample it, ruthless, cruel, beneath their shoes,
and the smoke from railway stations and chimneys
will blacken its white feathers. . .

There will be white snow only in gardens
where children have played.

Translated from Bulgarian by Roy Macgregor-Hastie.

Roy Macgregor-Hastie is the principal verse tranlator in the English speaking world; his many books, four of them in the UNESKO Collection of Represantive Works, are widely used in universities and colleges and read by idividual lovers of great poetry.

Library | Atanas Dalchev