Descendants - Elisaveta Bagyrana

No portraits of my grandfathers are kept

fixed in a family picture-book.

I know nothing of the testaments they left,

The lives they led, their souls, their looks.

But I sense the wandering, self-willed beat

of the ancient blood of all my kin.

Its raging rouses me from sleep,

it draws me to our first-found sin.

Perhaps some grandmother — dark-eyed,

with silken pantaloons and turban —

escaped at darkest night to ride

with an alien, fair-featured Khan.

Perhaps across the Danubian Plain

hooves came drumming on the chase.

Yet they were saved from being slain

for the wind smoothed our their every trace.

Perhaps because of this I'm gripped

by lands unseized by human eyes,

by horses that fly at the crack of the whip,

the wind-splashed, free-affirming cry.

Perhaps along my way I'll falter

and lies and sin may show my worth.

But I am, indeed, your faithful daughter,

by bond of blood, my mother earth.

---

Elisaveta Bagyrana (1893 - 1991) Bulgaria

Translated by Kevin Ireland

Source: Bulgarian Virtual Library