Valia Balkanska

Always a story there if you stop and look:

hers begins in mountains and meadows

and will not end until, on some distant planet

or in the emptiness between stars,

the fragile messengers we've sent

meet whatever their fate might be.

We will not, cannot know –

but might take some hope in thinking

that these traces of ours will be found

and that the song of a хайдук rebel,

music drawn from the grass and earth,

will be heard beneath unfamiliar constellations

will sound beneath an otherworldly sky.

Valia Balkanska’s recording of the Bulgarian folk song ‘Излел е Делю хайдутин’ features on the Golden Record, a selection of the sounds and music of the Earth sent into space on board the two Voyager probes. The song's on YouTube here. 

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

On 'Twelfth Night' (For Shakespeare's 450th)

I was tempted to ask it myself

as the ferry ground against

seaweed-greened harbour walls:

‘What country, friends, is this?’

Overlooked by abandoned palace,

remnant of some earlier kingdom,

we pulled in by a customs house

with handwritten welcome sign

and sprouting wire palms

across the dockside development area.

Who knew what we would find?

In a dark cell,

perched above shale-beds

in this corner of a promontory,

I’m overlooking absences

of a neatly turned plot,

a plunging watercourse.

‘We’ll come out of it

all right in the end,’

I think I heard you say.

Over our heads, birds plunge

and swoop into the thermals.

Stripped down to no more

than a bare, forked fear of heights,

I’m walking back up the slope

into a myriad coincidences,

opportunities for love amended.

23rd April marks the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth - and we wanted to celebrate it on Colourful Star, not least because Marina took inspiration from Shakespeare for the design of the project's logo. 'Twelfth Night' seems an apposite choice of subject for this post, because the answer to Viola's famous question at the beginning of the play - 'What country, friends, is this?' - is 'This is Illyria, lady', effectively locating the play in SE Europe.

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Честит Великден Happy Easter

 In the quiet of Easter morning,

the children are all anticipation.

We are prone in our bed,

rumpling the cover into a sea.

Light doesn’t so much insist

as wash against the windows.

The year cleanses itself.

This game of waves flings up

rubbery dog fish, spiny crustaceans.

At the point where water laps

at rock pools and shingle,

our daughter reaches out,

finds a black-and-tan egg case,

hope washed up, an angel’s purse.

Bulgaria's Easter traditions are rich and various: you can read more about them here.

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Цветница

On the cusp of tulip season

in our mid-spring garden

colours break through damp grey:

pie-eyed crocus, fried-egg plants,

daffodils, snowdrops, keen annuals.

Blossom fills out the teetering branches.

Somewhere else (not far, not wild),

on this Palm Sunday, Flower Day,

visits and greetings, tables laid

for those who’ve come to say

Честит имен ден!

in living room, hall or kitchen.

The smell of loam and petals

the same in both our houses.

Sunday 13 April this year is both Palm Sunday and Flower Day – a name-day for all those in Bulgaria whose names derive from flowers. 

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

The Old Bell Tower

From sharp edges of Atlantic weather,

bungalows, ring roads, Saxon churches,

Europe proceeds to shallow roofs,

slate yards, balconies, onion domes:

pragmatic architectural variations

might easily be mistaken

for proof of differences set in stone.

History emerges from perspective;

sky darkens from the past.

The silence of bells is the same

no matter what the language,

and yet with a little learning
I might just hear
footsteps, stirrups, sword-blades –

whatever it is that’s gathering in those clouds.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips