BUTTERFLY ON A PIN
by Blaga Dimitrova

Translated by Ludmilla G.Popova-Wightman

You don’t know real loneliness
if you don’t know closeness.
The road to great solitude
passes through great love.
A measure of the immense
horizon of loneliness
is the embrace from which
You extricate yourself.
Imagine how many times
the narrow circle of this embrace
fits into the cosmic circle of loneliness.
you are impaled exactly in the center—

a live butterfly on a pin.
Wrench yourself out! try to fly
with the pin piercing your heart.
The space confronting you is boundless.
Freedom has the salty taste of sea
                        and solitude.

Blaga Dimitrova (1922–2003) was one of Bulgaria’s most loved and celebrated poets.Blaga’s poems are intimate, subdued, thoughtful and caring. Many of her poems dwell on the scars (having lived in the communist era) she has endured in life. I chose this poem as it is indicative of her sensibility and minimalist poetics. Behind every scar there is a story. But in her poems, it is rather implied than told. Maybe the censorship required her to adopt this mode. The above poem begins and ends with scar statements. Yet the poem is inspirational as we know there are many around us who try to 'fly with the pin piercing your heart'. I loved the economy of her words in describing it.

From Scars: Poems by Blaga Dimitrova