Столът/The chair

Typically, I find it – this vantage –

on the all-but-last day I’m here.

I should have known. I’ve seen

the chairs put out for passers-by

on the forecourts of shops,

the pensioners with legs akimbo

beside the speckled hearts        

of water melon, the graded ranks

of tomatoes. And here,

at the neighbourhood’s edge,

I’m on a chair with wisteria trails

shading out the sunshine

on this almost last day of August,

with the traffic all but gone

and the end-of-season goalmouths

bruising the field where neighbours

walk their dogs. The city –

and its business – is that way,

past the trees whose roots explode

through the pavement, the café,

the cosmetic surgery clinic.

It won’t be long before I go,

but for the moment there’s this chair

and the open space

and that radio on a building site

which is playing a song

that once we thought was our own.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Сезоните на Живота/Seasons of Life

Well, for me, of course,

it's autumn – that sting

of age and what I’m part of.

In the room that’s still open,

I’m doing my best to hold on:

flies delve into plums

and that’s just what they do.

The brows of ships nose out

into a harbour beyond the point.

I came home once

and I had none of it.

But that was me just saying

how old I might have been.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Приключенията на една улица/The adventures of a street

Even the trees have some disquiet.

At the slightest disturbance, our dog

takes shelter, growling under my desk.

Circumstances close in. It’s as if,

in that downtown apartment,

the dripping geyser forewarned

apocalypse – or the afternoon music,

blaring out from some distant radio,

was soundtracking a situation

that I would never be able to grasp.

You can see the wood for the trees,

if you choose to – but that’s not

what I’ve been told and told again.

In the shadows of trees in the park,

we've found some space where,

flipping off caps from bottles of cider,

we can talk. Elsewhere, over the city,

the planes fly in and tomorrow

another bunch of people will be here.

The trams ruck and fret across old lines.

Clutching the handrail down into the metro,

I’m pretending there’s been no change.

At the ticket machine, there isn’t.

I bob and weave my barcode at the reader

and then take myself back up to the street.

I can walk home from here and count

the trees which unwittingly punctuate

the journey from downtown to home.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Ето/Here Is

Doing my best to remember

what's changed, I’m back

at the point before the point

when it happened:

a memory skirts the horizon

like a grace note.

Here is …

the colour of regret,

the geography of loss,

the physics of departure,

the thing that I was doing

just before the moment

you shouted for that knife

and here I am,

handing it over.

From here to wherever,

the flowers cling to granite,

assert themselves, flourish –

like a kind of relief.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips