A ROOM IN THE DREAM
There is a room in my dream
where the girl with the blue dress
is laughing.
That room is lit
by buzzing orange burners.
Snow has blocked
two-thirds of the window:
it is still falling
in the warm street lights.
But I am unable to enter
that room in my dream,
to sit on the bed by the girl
that went away.
Copyright © 2005 by Vladimir Levchev.
Biography:
Vladimir Levchev is a poet and writer, residing in Washington, D.C. He was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1957. He graduated from the MFA program in Creative Writing at American University, Washington, D.C., in 1996. He has more than ten books of poetry, a book of essays and two novels published in Bulgaria, where he is a well-known writer. He founded the first Bulgarian independent magazine Glas, which was banned by the Communist authorities before November 1989. Levchev's first American book of poetry, Leaves from the Dry Tree, translated in English by the author with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications, New York, in 1996. His second poetry book Black Book of the Endangered Species was published in 1999 by Word Works, Washington, D.C. His most recent book The Rainbow Mason, was published by Cornerstone Press, Charlottesville, VA, in 2004.
Since his graduation, he has been teaching literature and writing at University of Maryland (Baltimore County), George Washington University (Washington, D.C.), Montgomery College (MD), as well as languages at FSI (Dept. of State). His poetry has appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines, including Poetry, Chicago, and Child of Europe: Penguin's Anthology of Eastern European Poetry.