ROSES
Zlatograd -- Ralitsa Petrova
the bulgarian roses and their grape vines
over the concrete and the chain link
in the front gardens
are worthy of a poem
if a tongue can ever speak them
the towns and cities coming out of the green hills and
mountains
if we can place those things in the flat of our mouths
to drink them
the pot holes and the mud bricks
in the balkan dust
the high plains stretching out their bodies in the breeze
the peasants endure whoever comes to extort them
the peasants have the wealth in soil
whoever comes to drink their blood
the vast hills laid out like a fallen blanket
those roses
scarlet in the dust
bleeding Zlatograd -- Ralitsa Petrova
Zlatograd ("Gold town") is a town near the Greek-Bulgarian border. As part of the Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye (the "Exalted Ottoman State") it was called Daridere before the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest ended the 2nd Balkan War. The Turks had taken it from the Byzantines in the 14th century. In the 13th century Ivan Asen II of Vtorо Bălgarskо Tsarstvo (the 2nd Bulgarian empire) seized it from Theodoros Komnenos Doukas of Epirus, who only ruled the area for 3 years. Before that Theodoros Branas ("Livernas") had ruled as "caesar" under the Crusader state Imperium Romaniae (the "Latin Empire of Constantinople") after the 1205 victory of Bulgarian tsar Kaloyan, the uncle of Ivan Asen. Previously, it had been part of the Roman empire. It is part of a region which has been described as the world's most contested.
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