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.

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Ivan Theofilov (born 1931) Bulgaria

Translated by Zdravka Mihaylova

Source: International Poetry in English Translation