Title: Square of Light

(Verse 1 – calm, rising)
Today the cities breathe in a tightened rhythm,
a paper budget weighing down like stone.
Along the boulevards a silent anger
wakes up and steps out on the balcony.

Sofia groans, but it is not from fear,
Plovdiv answers, breathing over Maritsa,
Varna sends its waves of light –
a people of scattered voices grows a face.

(Chorus)
We are not just numbers, tables and percentages,
we are the bread, the blood, the breath of this land.
When the knife is pressing down to children’s bones,
the street turns into a song, the song becomes our stand.
Hand in hand – Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna –
today we say it clearly: we won’t live like this again.

(Verse 2 – more tense)
Inside the triangle of power the sirens echo,
police lines redraw a foreign sky.
But people are not turning back to their houses –
they’re staying ‘til someone hears their front line.

Don’t divide us into “left” and “right” and “ours” –
we’re just the ones who pay the bill each time.
And we are asking calmly, without silence:
“Tell us, who exactly did you write this heaven for in mind?”

(Bridge – almost spoken)
This is not a riot born of hatred,
this is memory for children, bread and roof.
We’re not begging crumbs from any foreign table,
we want a budget with the human being written first – that’s the simple truth.

(Final chorus – expanded)
We are not a crowd, we are a voice in the cold shop window,
that shatters all the glass with singing, not with stones in the dark.
When in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna no one’s silent anymore,
Europe hears that Bulgaria is alive and standing, heart to heart.
Hand in hand – out on every square of light –
tonight we write our line: we are not “costs”, we are a free, unbroken heart.

Lalu Metev, December 1, 2025

I begin in the threshold where a word is not yet born and silence still remembers its breath. I write to shape what insists on being carried forward — not as ornament, but as revealed truth. My practice moves like inner weather: shifts of memory, tenderness, and the questions that refuse to leave us. Genres are rooms of one house — poems, essays, fragments, genealogies, musical sketches — each a voice in a single resonant chord. Even silence has its essential place in that chord. I attend to the small gestures that disclose identity; to the secret bridges between private life and collective memory; to the quiet architecture of the spirit that needs no ceremony. My aim is language that opens rather than decorates — windows through which readers encounter their own inner sky. Form, conscience and intimacy guide me: introspection keeps me honest; conceptual shape grants the invisible weight; moral sensibility anchors each phrase. My professions — poet, publicist, jurist — lean together: law sharpens clarity, poetry humbles certainty, philosophy teaches listening to what is unsaid. If a single thread unites my work, it is this: to transmute vulnerability into luminous strength and to make silence a place of meaning. I am Lalu Metev — Bulgarian poet, essayist and jurist. I write to preserve what is delicate and essential in the human spirit, to follow traces of memory and dignity, and to find where the personal meets the universal. This is the path I walk; this is the voice I follow; this is the presence I offer.

“Square of Light” is an atmospheric alternative protest rock song in English, mid-tempo, with an emotional, energetic male vocal and a distinctly European protest song spirit. Spacious clean delay guitars, warm pads and steady drums carry verses that stay calm but tense, telling the story of citizens in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna who take to the streets against an unjust state budget. The chorus opens up into an anthemic, uplifting refrain with punchy drums, layered overdriven guitars, wide synths and crowd-style backing vocals on the line “We are not just numbers… the street turns into a song, the song becomes our stand.” A more intense second verse tightens the groove and bass, leading into an almost spoken-word bridge over a building riff, where the voice sounds closer and more direct. The final chorus grows into a big, cinematic climax with stacked vocals, ringing guitars and a clear final statement – “we are not costs, we are a free, unbroken heart” – before a short, powerful outro lets the last chords and echoes fade over the image of a square filled with light.