Translated by Vera Ivanova

To walk across thousands of

Anonymous towns –

Labyrinths of boredom;

To walk without stopping

Neither in a hovel, nor at stations –

A Bedouin without an oasis, blinded

By sun and salt, blinded

By sand storms, blinded

By lack of words…

Two-humped camels chew

The deserts out of melancholia.

To walk without stopping,

Until arriving

In a town without walls and embrasures,

Without underground tunnels,

Without bunkers, without airports,

Without courts, without prisons,

Without night guards, nameless,

In a town with a single house,

In a town where you are not anonymous.

You will tell her at the threshold:

“This town is good because it is yours.”

ANTON BAEV (1963) is the author of a number of books in different genres: eight books of poetry, six novels, two books of short stories, a book of philosophical fragments and two academic monographs. His work has been translated and published in German, English, French, Spanish, Turkish, Greek, Serbian, Russian, Albanian and Macedonian languages, and has a Doctor’s degree at the Institute for Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Board Chairman of Plovdiv LIK Foundation, he is Founder and Director of the International Poetry Festival Orpheus, President of the Writer’s Association in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.