Баба Марта/Baba Marta

Midwinter spring and sunlight strains

beyond terracotta rooftops: the year

is already poised in the balance

as if because we lack faith it would go,

become ceaseless cumulo-nimbus,

a drowning of prospects in cotton wool.

Except no. Because this is something

others have known from on old:

seasons hint and need placation

like unexpected loves which depend

on linden branches in a park,

like these assertions that all will be well,

like a ripeness and a readiness

which here, amongst the red and white,

I confidently thought to tell.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Керамика/Ceramics

It is all potential:

us, beneath this,

a concrete council building,

where a 75 or 77

will growl to a stop

on my first visit

to our future home town.

Unfamiliar shop frontages,

lit for an autumn evening,

are signals I fail to decipher,

flashes along our progress

to your mysterious address.

Walking up and around

the pub where we would drink,

the office where I would work,

we’re arriving outside

the house which, long before that,

(but sooner than we think)

we would come to share.

In your room, on the sill,

are the bowls and vases you’ve made

working the summer in a pottery

and I’m just in the doorway, clay-like, still.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

За любов/For love

It’s not so much to say, a few breaths

adding up to an indication, a hint

at what we might be revealing:

words which slump into meaning,

a promise and a memory –

the best that we might hope for, actually.

After so long, I will step into the kitchen,

ingrained with borrowed jargon, toying

with mistaken punctuation, that world

they think they’ve created –

and recall the fence where lovers left

their padlocks when I was, as you know it,

not so far away in Dubrovnik.

 Here, then, is spring and the roses:

the start of it, a coming home.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Двор/Courtyard

February hangs in the balance.

Sunlight’s proving deceptive,

luring snowdrops out of the mulch

to be decapitated by frost.

Midway down the garden,

our anniversary rose

holds its ground, stately

in its refusal to bud.

Those profligate others ...

Well, here, perhaps, we’ll shake

at the season’s mastery –

almost precisely as he put it:

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips