Jean Valjean

Articulate among the rocks

of this expedient exile

not so far from home,

what thoughts, what stories

recur like aftertastes

of not so haute cuisine ...

Victor Hugo on Guernsey,

amongst his poems

and les miserables,

plotting the fate

of convict Jean Valjean,

the sea his own barricades.

22 May was the 129th anniversary of Victor Hugo’s death.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

За 24 май

Как да пиша, но с букви

от една древна азбука,

със звуци от сърцето?

Те носят дълги години,

спомени и истории:

една култура стои тук

в техните обикновени линии.

Тя следва моите ръце,

които създават думите,

които откриват карти

в най-малките кътчета.

Без тях – никаква любов,

никаква болка, никаква песен.

"Красиви са," казва тя.

How to write but with letters

from an ancient alphabet,

with sounds of the heart?

They bear long years,

memories and histories:

a culture stands here

in their plain marks.

She follows my hands,

which make the words,

which discover maps

in the smallest places.

Without them, no love,

no pain, no song.

“They’re beautiful,” she says.

24 May is Bulgarian Education, Culture and Slavonic Literature Day or Ден на българската просвета и култура и на славянската писменост. It is also St Cyril and Methodius’ Day, commemorating the brothers who devised the Glagolitic alphabet from which, in turn, Cyrillic is derived.

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips (with help from and thanks to Iliyana Mircheva and Tsvetomira Peykova)

Bulgarian Monastery

A freshness as after rain

in this deeper seclusion

where our putative span figures –

from gardened beds to slim trees –

in an architectural scheme,

epitome of calm between storms.

Navigating corridors and cloisters,

we thicken patina and paintwork

with thoughts we’ve brought to bear

from guidebook précis,

biography of this or that artist,

history of dates and erasure.

By a bench on these stone flags,

some internal murmur frets,

pushes out into a penumbra

where others meanings

might wait to be distilled

from a precinct’s iconic silence.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

The Kettle

 So simple in construction –

but who first thought

to fashion that shape,

add spout and handle?

And who before them

found that leaves dropped

into boiling water

blossomed, made tea?

Or that clay transformed

to porcelain? And who

took fire and tamed it?

An untraceable regression –

but one which leads back

from this corner of the kitchen,

through centuries, millennia,

to a moment of discovery

on the margins of
a vast and unmapped plain.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Гергьовден

Inside this hushed rotunda, frescoes,

haloed figures, patches of worn plaster

around serpent-dragon, horse and lance

are like a map of endurance,

faith held to and held onto

through years of omen and eclipse.

We move through incense traces,

iteration of prayers and blessings,

not so far from shopping hall and traffic,

along a cusp of the sacred and shadow,

where everything might be laid out before us

in resurgent light across the iconostasis.

6^th May is Гергьовден or St George’s Day in Bulgaria. 

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Tulips

They seemed to bloom for weeks,

banks of tulips in the college yard –

bright as crimson envelopes you filled

with mementoes, drawings, news.

Hurrying back from the post-room –

a student in daps and my own world –

and rashly tearing open what you’d sent,

I had to stop beside those vivid beds:

breeze-taken, a lock of your red hair

scattered across those sun-dappled flowers.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips