I slept nestled against a wall of doors
endless as an infinite wall
I woke up
in my mouth was a key
I unlocked the nearest door
there in a windowless room
nestled against the wall opposite the door
a man was sitting and sleeping
in his mouth was a key
I woke him up
and we set out to wake up
the other sleepers
behind the other doors of the white rooms
then I woke up
–Nikolay Boykov,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)
Nikolay Boykov was born on January 26th, 1968 in Vidin. He holds a degree in Hungarian philology from Lajos Kossuth University in Debrecen, Hungary. Nikolay has served as an instructor of Hungarian language and literature at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. He is the author of three books of poetry and two books of prose, most recently The Book of Life (2010). Additionally, he has translated several Hungarian authors into Bulgarian, including The Union Jack by Imre Kertész.