Public Republic

Roumen Leonidov
From The Night of the Salesman

Photo: DerrickT

In an empty room a little boy is sitting cross-legged
With its back to us.
The child is naked, it is obvious he is resting his chin
On an elbow, thinking. The square of the floor rises
Into a cone, the room turnes into a small transparent
Pyramid.
The boy floats in transparency
Head down. Like
An embryo in the universe’s belly. The boy is all alone. He is
Absolute loneliness. The boy is almost a baby.
He is more of a thought of a boy than a baby. The cone
With the little human hangs in the room. Streams of sweat
Are running down the walls. Lecherous drops of sweat. In the three-dimensional Morning. The hollow iceberg upturns and
Resumes its initial position. Over
The boy’s head there is a cage with a parrot
Hanging. It’s a talking parrot. The infant
Smiles. He has an old man’s face.
The infant smiles. As if he knows
He will never be born.
Behind him Mary stands.
Reading the eyes of those that see,
Reading their absent presence. She doesn’t understand it,
Doesn’t want to.
Mary, a familiar face.
A decapitated concept.
A boy
With an old man’s face. Behind some bars.
Smiling.
Bars of a zoo-cage. The boy
Behind the bars is my little brother. His sister is not there. Hensel
Without his Grettel. Who will crunch his little
Finger?
The boy in the small pyramid
Stays with his back to us.
The pyramid’s top opens the triangle of
The thighs, a little laocoon in battle
With the creeps of the umbilical cord,
He drifts towards the exit, drifts towards infinity, drifts
Until he turns into a dot,
But the dot comes back instantly
Turning into a mouth – the huge, greedy mouth of a
Soul turned vampire.
A close-up. A still.
The laughter of asteroids is heard. The end.
Then come the credits – half-forgotten, half-familiar.
The camera is leaving the memory,
It is going out through the screen, we are flying
Two hundred yards over assyria, over those dead
Cities we know
From similar dream flights, the second camera
Follows the first one’s nose, flying by,
Shooting the flight
Of the camera, we keep on flying, somewhere towards the gospel
Of eve’s hills, towards the sacred waters
Of memory, the microfilm of the hair, the
Wall of Wails, the Whiteness. Towards the Very
Whiteness. The screen dies out – White.
Buzzing White. Bubbling ultrasound washing away
The desire for little or any compassion.
THE END.
The lamps in the cinema remain dark. No one
From the audience stands up. They all look the same
From behind. Silhouettes. Are they still thinking. Or
Still dead.
The left wall of the cinema opens
And it turns into a dark rainy street. Steps
Are heard. All finally
Go home. With each step they
Sink a little into the earth
And their skulls
Gradually pave
The deserted street.
After a while a boy
Lost on his way to the finale
Will run across the pensive cobbles,
Will dart into the night
And carry on
Ahead.

Translated from Bulgarian by Kristin Dimitrova