CITY LIGHTS

By Yasen Vedrin

(Freezing Point)

She will look with her eyes full of light

At the world, so unfamiliar, apart.

And you — keep your silence in night,

That no one can love your own heart.

If you just reach your hand to extend —

How can one lonely heart be achieved?

Will the small candlelight in the end

Be in bright neon flashes perceived?

Will the delicate flower smell sweet,

If it’s shaken, with no one to call?

Doesn't chill make our feelings retreat,

When our yearning stays hidden from all?

Smile now with your sorrow concealed,

Like a knight with his armor in pieces.

Seeking joy — in this hour, on this field —

You are chasing a memory that ceases...

She will look with her eyes full of light.

Love will find her in every heartbeat.

Let no grief in your eyes come to sight,

Even if the whole world fades in defeat.

VANITY FAIR

By Yasen Vedrin

(Freezing Point)

To a ball I was asked by old Vanity:

"Hey, you cheerful, bright charmer! Come near!

Come and dance with the elite of humanity,

With no weight of human sorrow or fear!

Look, the cognac is festively gleaming

In this glass made of delicate crystal...

How many others are waiting and dreaming

For my invitation to cross this threshold...

I chose you! For your mind is so splendid!

With your lyre, you write with such ease!

On the crest of the wave, Yasen, blended,

This prestige will be yours, if you please.

Here a courtly, grand lady is glancing,

There a famous professor observes.

Drink the cognac, while we are advancing —

Blessed poet with Vanity's nerves...

I am tired of worldly, prose thinking.

With your wonderful verses, praise me today!

Give the most fiery rose without blinking

To this brothel of mine, on display!

Courtesan next to virgin patrician —

No plot could be more captivating.

Look at me with deep eyes, your ambition!

Possess me in rhymes, escalating!..."

I was cast out... I refused to obey.

Vanity traded me for a snob's name.

And I went to the slush, far away —

Where sadness rings out just the same.

A TALK WITH VALJEAN

By Yasen Vedrin

(Freezing Point)

Invented by Hugo’s immortal pen,

Within a story, holy and sublime,

I see you in your final weight again,

While ice has locked the earth in frozen time.

I am no radical of extreme thought,

Yet full of pure illusions, brotherhood.

By day I trudge through sticky mud, distraught,

Of mutiny, shame, sins against the good.

Your spirit comes to visit my own heart,

Your deep and harmless essence, so profound.

To stay deaf in the gale, to do my part,

Against the snakelike whispers spinning round.

Above a cup of soup with some gray wretch,

To read Christ’s holy words and contemplate.

To meet Gavroche before my door, and stretch

The Love of loves to shield him from his fate.

To leave a mark behind. A trace, a sign.

In hearts and minds. In palms and eyes awake.

So that the evil falls in floods, divine,

With iron handcuffs locked for his own sake.

And this, my friend Valjean, is where I stand,

My final, holy barricade and turn —

By evil of this world, unchecked, untamed,

Upon my fateful bonfire to burn...

WHITE BEAR

By Yasen Vedrin

(Freezing Point)

A white bear is the faith I am holding

In a world that is freezing so fast.

No future perspective unfolding,

And no calendars turned to the last.

They keep telling me: "Think more globally!"

And they push all their charts in my face.

"Warmth is coming, it's real and noticed!"

As the ice melts away from its place.

But the fears in my heart that are shrinking

Are prepared with another scale to measure.

For by day, when at souls I am looking,

I see shivering hearts lose their treasure.

There is no sign of mercy or healing,

And the time is so blank, so colder.

Under clothes, everyone is concealing

What is holy, and personal, and bolder.

Ice is drifting and crawling, untamed,

A sharp iceberg is threatening in white.

Even if like Titanic my heart had been named —

It would perish and break in the fight.

Maybe ancient and deep intuition

Keeps my soul in a shield, unrevealed.

A white bear is my faith and condition

In a world that is freezing and chilled.