Loneliness Pretending to be Absent

By Marieta Piegeler

‘2020.
Peoples and nations, like exasperated neighbours stuck in a lift, are looking for explanations and where to place the blame (as ever), but also for a way out and salvation.
How could even a crumb of private life be saved?
This question bothers me, as I find it to be existential for all the arts.  
For years now it has not been easy with that expanding intrusion into all spheres of privacy, made worse by the pandemic, in a crowded and even more inconvenient world.
Life in pieces or a piece of life?
This is what makes me write.                                      
I am offering a piece of life.’
Marieta Piegeler

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781398419025

Marieta Piegeler

Marieta Piegeler was born in Bulgaria and has already published two books of poetry so far: Reflections on the Journey and the Shoes and Such a Thin Dividing Line. Her poems have been printed in numerous local and national papers in Bulgaria and have been included in a number of anthologies in Bulgaria and in the USA. She won third place in the Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize in 2014. Her first poetry book in German will be published later this year. Marieta divides her time between Razgrad, Bulgaria, her husband’s native country Germany and Spain, where her parents now live.

Book preview

1 The Loneliness of Love

The Beer of Love

Come on, admit it,

wasn’t it heavenly

with the first sip?

So refreshing

in the heat of life.

If you have to describe it –

unforgettable.

(Like . . . I don’t know –

too few things)

And unbelievably sweet

for the palate,

forgetting the price

of the air in foam.

Clearly,

the depth of the glass

reflects the depth,

one thinks about

in the end.

Because, coming down

and gloriously

to the bottom

everything comes

to its proper place –

The beer – any beer

is bitter.

‘Don’t stop and move’

Don’t stop and move,

when love is impossible.

Try not to give up

after saying goodbye.

Although you know –

the world will grow into

an empty, sick place

where you will be the shadow.

You have to crawl

through mud and snow,

through greasy puddles

or on the hot asphalt.

Sometimes you will move your lips,

but shadows are never heard.

And their gaze

no one has ever seen.

Stretched,

your hands will capture

nothing,

because the body

will continue farther

divided alone and

refuse to return.

Angry

You said hello, but I wonder,

where did your friendship come from?

We haven’t said the most important things.

We’re not talking.

We don’t cry, we don’t laugh together.

Hello,

they have trained you

to say it.

That’s what you do.

Hello

is the pinnacle of your effort

to understand me.

Superficially,

and ritual,

and without address:

Just Hello.

A Lesson

I got married

because of a sense of inferiority,

but also

because of moments of unity.

Or perhaps to know more

about crossing the borders

of complete or temporary hopelessness.

I got married

because of the new kind of loneliness,

pretending sometimes to be absent.

And actually – I got married

intensively to study

to be wrong,

seeing myself

how I am changing,

but also how I am changing you – partly,

but not more than