Venice masks

Monday, 19 October 2020

The Fish Market in Athens - Ivan Theofilov

In the cheerful narrow backstreets
with shops of advertisingly confessive mood
along the motley swarming crowds
where oriental customs reign,
here they are – a commercial cathedral
with atavistic resounding hall, cheered up
by the faience counters
that sparkle with slippery or unmoving
                violet-scaly
                jelly-green
                mucous-black
                and transparent white
bizarre creatures in idle captivity;
with gills and tentacles, with eyes and jaws,
created for a completely different, less committed
and more sincere world! Now they look like
a postdiluvian scene
(a moment of unfathomable marine innocence).
But all this is a most common
market place – illusive diamond,
dazzling with the reflections from its facets, letting
its arabesques of light play
on the majolica dome. And any
intrusion of allegory here is pointless.

Ivan Theofilov (born 1931) Bulgaria
Translated by Zdravka Mihaylova

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