Ekaterina Grigorova (born in 1975 in the town of Dobrinishte) is a Bulgarian poetess and a graduate of Modern Greek Philology at Sofia University “St. Climent Ohridski”. Four poetry books by Ekaterina Grigorova have been published: 1. “Faraday cage” (2013, Janet – 45 Print and Publishing) 2. “Board on the Wet Sand” (Ergo, 2014) 3. Empty dawn (Small Stations Press, 2019) 4. “Wood falls into the stove from above“ (2024, Janet – 45 Print and Publishing). Grigorova is a recipient of numerous literary awards and distinctions, including The Binyo Ivanov National Award (for contributing to the development of Bulgarian poetic syntax) in 2014, The Slaveykov National Award 2014, Sahitto International Award for Literature 2023 (Winners of ‘Jury Award’), ”The Sea” National Literary Contest 2023 (Poetry Category), The Nikola Vaptsarov National Poetry Contest 2023, “The Sea” National Literary Contest 2025 (Prose Category). Selections of her poetry have been translated into English, Italian, Hindi, Greek and other languages. She is currently an assistant professor at the Department of “Mediterranean and Oriental Studies” at New Bulgarian University.
Endemic sea
This mountain’s like that: an endemic sea.
It smells of rain in the morning.
A little sun shines at noon.
And again it smells of rain.
It rains in the afternoon.
In the evening mists rise
still higher up,
where a woman with the head of a swordfish
repairs the shore rather than a net.
When the net is ready,
the fisherwoman lowers the boat
and wades into the lave of deep snow,
clouds and granite.
Oxygen’s rare,
it brings visions and hailstorms
of bracken.
But not for the woman sword.
Constantly in motion,
she hunts for pearls of ice in the open
blue lakes and the salty driven snow.
Below in the emerald green lagoons
the wind talks to its octopus’ garden.
You can hear the sails of its colours in the sunrise.
Late evening a butterfly returns
to the paper lantern,
shining with its single wing
on the surface of the dark.
But the sea is denser than night,
higher than the flames of the stars.
And the woman has nothing to say
in the salty mountains
other than to fish about fish.
Ring
And then attracted by the empty place in the firmament,
faded into the darkness,
I walked in the direction of the sirens –
the breezes blowing in from the sea.
Springing along with my unsteady German ski pole
in the town of our one-time Covid vacation,
it’s like I’m stepping on another hoary-headed land.
The waves still announce their break-ups in love.
I’m still curious to know how the bearing
of the wind changes according to the rain
and whether the yucca that grows here
grows to the ends of its possibilities?
The faces are so cute
on the homeward bound fishing boats
that smack the water blissfully and fall blissfully silent in the night.
The brightest dreaming star
clutches the end of its pillow with its fist in the dark.
And then imperceptibly relaxes
and with its sisters slowly fades in the firmament
while the heads of earthly babies
drowse one after the other in the fragrant linen
of love and purity.
In this Black Sea night with music – no dancing –
exhaled by bagpipes roiling in unceasing contentment,
and family bands, amused by outsmarting,
glide on the water with the ease of God’s chosen bodies,
with the natural elegance of linen shirts,
with a laugh that flips like a coin for luck
where breathless the matter of H2) kisses the open eyes
of bloated cows;
where they turn the limbs of calves and kitchen tables
fantastically away from the storm.
Where, charred by the cannonades
of war, dolphins awaken
in the light rusty gold
and black dust of love and purity.
Poetry
I.
This hour when the memory rushes into the room
from very far away
and scatters violets in the dark,
gathers honey in the daggers of the dark.
The curtains swell slightly
and becomes velvety
like the smooth sea in the early morning.
Then perhaps you notice
that they are my shoulders,
sunk in the beyond
and tie up the boat of dreams
to sway in your earthly palm.
Poetry is the clothes
you bought for poor children;
the trees you pass by
out of respect for their essence.
The coincidence
that at the same time of night
you hear the clocks in your mind
of the last smiling town
beating firmly with the beating of your heart:
Dan-boom-dan-boom!
The moment we both landed
with a snowball in the desert
to hear the fluttering of winged stars –
for their powerful wind blow away
solitude to the nearby forest.
II.
Poetryfalls unexpected on the tongue of the barometer.
It spins nine swallows around the nest of its finger;
ruffles the hair of the girls. Of the boys.
At night the predators’ headlights melt
in the hypnotic OM of the road,
and somewhere further into the field a mice is afraid
to put out its muzzle from its shelter in the dirt.
Its whiskers rattle on the crystal shaft of silence,
first trying the endlessness of death.
(How close to her home is the cruel human species
she can sniff from afar!)
Poetry comes with the wind
that pricks up ears and stirs up rubbish,
but once the worst is over,
it floats again over the shimmering turquoise fields
to graze incessantly with the upturned lips of the sea
Calm! Wisdom!
As if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth.
III.
Poetry’s feminine face
Ever since I can remember, dry leaves grew in her hair,
and in the shadow of her eyebrows, rolled in a ball,
two exhausted little animals slept.
(It turns out that these two hedgehogs
were the sharpest thing on that face.)
Ever since I can remember, in front of her house
a sea of olive groves silvered.
Her heart pumped out the green density
of the light all the more slowly.
(It turns out that the pine groves usual for these latitudes
in front of the front door are from another picture
in which the wind’s strong hands cut memories
into hellish semicircles.)
Ever since her memory’s been affected,
black sown fields often cross her gaze
and snakes run through her nose:
the sun strikes that face,
the words don’t stand in a line,
their tongue becomes a shepherd dog.
Everybody went to church.
Here a view over the neighbours’ yard remains:
the brownish tin roof
and green shed of the bungalow,
the slender wooden ladder
lacking flying feet:
a strange misconception in the face of the wine flask
recalling thirst and a chamber
which speaks unequivocally in every language.
Likewise the metal arcs of the future greenhouse,
plus three or four fruit trees redolent with tenderness.
And the whole sky –
a sparkling mountain glacier
wrapped in thunderous clouds.
(Inside in the room two fish touch as if in a dream
and one throws water into the mouth of the other.)
Mother
The flesh, soft and warm,
displays the woven blouse
and the elegant legs in black cotton trousers
once again cross because of the pain.
The glasses are now old,
the eyes, the lips – no, no.
This is you –
our common world,
the great mother;
and when you go back into the earth,
we’ll know: everything important’s there.
So that we will be calm
that a piece of you is with us,
and the other – it will be.
The soil in the garden swallowed
that dark ring of shifting glow.
The peonies reddened and died away.
The apple grew dark.
The sunset grew dark.
Other afternoons grew dark
on the cement stage beneath the terrace.
But not this favourable greeting of the house
to the star every hour –
the blueberry evening:
flying envelope
and in the hand – cold.
Women’s Issues
If we’re on the verge of destruction,
is it too late to talk?
And if time is short,
is it funny to still fall in love,
that’s to say, not hate, until what?
Is it impudent to want
our arms to embrace,
our lips to be kissed?
Is it unseemly to want to die in peace,
flipping over the album
from this one here
to a garden beyond?
And to pledge our unconditional love
to our children who now
bear arms in utter torment or not,
who were born in utter torment,
who we bore with inhuman purpose –
with bloodied thighs:
wracked by gravity,
shot every two or three minutes
from the cannonade of contractions?
Translation: Tom Phillips
