Кратък разговор в кухнята/Brief conversation in the kitchen

It’s as if I’ve been here before,

sitting on this chair beneath

your painting of red peppers.

It’s as if I’m meeting again

people I knew in some other life –

as if you could ask me to pass

a particular plate or fork

and, without so much as a thought,

I’d reach for the drawer

where it’s always been kept.

It’s one way to explain

this atmosphere, this ease –

and, of course, we’ve spoken

via email, and I’ve seen on Skype

your painting in this kitchen

where friends, not guests, are entertained.

It’s only as you make to leave,

to cycle across the city,

it’s as if I’m doing a disservice.

There was no other life,

nothing pre-ordained.

It’s as if I’ve forgotten the word

in my own language – although,

as we’re saying our goodbyes,

I’m not so sure it ever had one.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Весели празници/Happy holidays!

Warm wishes for Christmas and the New Year from all of us at Colourful Star!

Thank you for visiting our site and continuing to support us. 

We hope that you have had a rewarding year and that you've enjoyed our ongoing collaborations.

We'll be back with more new posts in a week or so.

Much love,

Marina, Vasilena and Tom

Това отдалечено място/That distant place

It’s tipping down and I’m off to Rakovski,

with that newly learned joke in my head:

‘White wine, white wine – why aren’t you red?’

Beneath NDK, we’re doing our best

to keep up, to say what we can, to drink

from the right bottles – it’s Malta

he’s talking about, that distant place,

and we’re here, in our apartment,

and she’s taking on folded paper with shears.

Everything’s written. Here is the weather forecast.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Музика през нощта/Music at night

                                                   Beside bottle clusters and salad plates,

                                                   exchanging intimations of time

                                                   we’ll be spending together, here

                                                   amongst moorland and mountain,

                                                   these stories we’ll share like fables,

                                                   we’re on a last glass of rakiya.

                                                   Except, of course, that’s never “good night”.

                                                   With instruments drawn from bags and cases,

                                                   they’re tuning up for songs that speak

                                                   of other histories, other causes –

                                                   and it might be I’m remembering

                                                   glimpses of tracks and yards where lives

                                                   are routinely, uniquely led

                                                   and fed the soaring rapture of his song.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Временно топене/A temporary thaw

                                                  Breath redoubles my cigarette smoke.

                                                  The city trees are creaking with snow.

                                                  Crystalline drifting under the branches

                                                  is not a new fall: it’s yesterday’s weather

                                                  beating a passing retreat, diffusing.

                                                  And so now here beside shopfronts

                                                  we’re dodging tumbling ice

                                                  from cordoned-off buildings

                                                  as cloud cover clears, reconvenes,

                                                  and early winter mist gathers

                                                  its skirts across our mountain.

                                                  A new gratitude for being at home

                                                  forms in the light trapped in our foyer

                                                  against a melting soundtrack.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Тих момент/A quiet moment

                                                And I suppose you can hear traffic on Slivnitsa,

                                                but for most of us it’s a pause with nothing in it.

                                                The dog across the street wanders dully along.

                                                Imperceptibly, the line between sunlight and shade

                                                slips across an apartment block’s ochre façade.

                                                A few late fig leaves drop into our path.

                                                An ordinary afternoon, towards four o’clock –

                                                a man in winter jacket, cap, lets himself out

                                                through a stern iron door, makes his way

                                                with the household waste to a corner dumpster.

                                                And yes, this may well be the kind of day

                                                when an Icarus somewhere rises, then falls,

                                                or a woman watering plants on her balcony

                                                looks down and, yes, sees something amazing.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Вечерята с кафе/Dinner with coffee

                                               There’s a table when they make room

                                               beside where a family’s gathered

                                               for a birthday: it’s late-season

                                               and there’s hardly anywhere open.

                                               Conversations lose their way

                                               between the generations

                                               until children skip from chair

                                               to chair, deflecting our attention.

                                               Now that the taped music’s cut,

                                               a couple are tuning their guitars

                                               while below us in the stairwell

                                               they’re lighting a single candle.

                                               There was hardly anywhere open

                                               but generations that had lost their way

                                               deflected our attention, tuning up

                                               for conversations on a birthday.

                                               And now that they’ve made room,

                                               there’s a table where we’ve gathered.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Сезонни пристигания/Seasonal arrivals

                                                      Hot spring water steam, like our breaths

                                                      around this late tram’s pantograph,

                                                      marks autumn’s sharper beginning.

                                                     Taps thrum into plastic bottles

                                                     and orange light falls across

                                                     the orange layered brickwork.

                                                     Other changes are on their way.

                                                     The cobbles on Dondukov

                                                     are slotted into place and the shops

                                                     are doing their best to seem familiar.

                                                     It’s like looking, then, into the future

                                                     or on some distant land – this snow,

                                                     with its fresh-fallen promise,

                                                     sitting pretty there on the mountain.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Пазаруване за подправки/Shopping for spices

                                            Pursuing modest adventures,

                                            the shopper commends the shopkeeper.

                                            Slatted sunlight brightens labels

                                            on an excess of choice.

                                            Vegetables hold colour

                                            like that hyperrealist painting

                                            of an industrial complex.

                                            The shopper might be

                                            the hyperrealist worker

                                            in his suit of silver foil.

                                            We’re buying cumin and pepper.

                                            In the aftermath of small change,

                                            there's no need for usual anxieties.

                                            That’s it. The deal is done.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Сняг на слънце/Snow in the sun

                                                     The old man accepts a Lucky Strike. 

-                                                                                                                   ‘At the Fishhouses’, Elizabeth Bishop

                                                These finds, with no effort, such as

                                                rectangular painted grille faces,

                                                or how you’d be under leaves

                                                turning now from green to gold,

                                                are forming into a view.

                                                Downtown, we’re beyond

                                                corrugated fencing, at the lights,

                                                waiting for traffic to disperse

                                                along this city-centre boulevard.

                                                Intent, a man and his son

                                                are attacking folk songs

                                                on acoustic guitar and accordion.

                                                We’ll read our books,

                                                too early, in the event,

                                                for where we’re due later.

                                                A translated ‘Hamlet’ quote

                                                painted on a junction box

                                                is further evidence

                                                of disjointed time.

                                                We’re in shirtsleeves,

                                                smoking Lucky Strikes,

                                                under the mountain’s

                                                offer of orientation,

                                                these early strata of snow

                                                laid across its shoulders.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Улични истории/Street stories

Planes crossing a web of stars.

It's early morning.

I'm out on the balcony

and, today, there's work

being done. It shakes

the floor. So what?

I'm in pyjamas

and our neighbour

in the purple top

is changing a tyre.

We didn't take a walk,

but opposite the school

the bakery did good business.

The women came out to smoke

at the laser dental clinic.

We've all got the same cups

in our hands, the same notes

from songs we remember.

Nobody knows the name

of this street, but like streets

in every city in the world,

it's got its stories. Here's one.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Уличният цветар/The street florist

We’re making our way, as you do,

back home from the Women’s Market –

though not up to speed with vocabulary,

we’re empty-handed turning out

onto Boulevard Slivnitsa.

Except that beyond a fishmonger’s

late-season catch blued with ice,

a sharp, sweet smell of chestnuts,

belts, plates, German accessories,

you’re taken with bucketed bunches

she’s brought from her garden

beyond the edge of town.

This one or that, it will sit

on our kitchen counter

through an Indian summer

we’ll be told another name for

as we piece together a language

and the words falling into place

will bring new things home.

Beside the carriageways

directing traffic east,

you’re squinting into sunlight.

We’re nearly there, as always.

At the crossing, you hold up

what you’ve exchanged

for the coins in your pocket,

these migrant flowers,

these transplanted blooms.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Реставрациите/The restorations

                                                            A square of late sun holds still

                                                            just long enough as here,

                                                            beneath incoming flight paths,

                                                            renovations progress.

                                                            Stripped-out furniture loads

                                                            a flatbed truck: tables, chairs

                                                            in use till yesterday –

                                                            their inherited possessions.

                                                            And down the stairs he emerges,

                                                            hands ghosted with plaster,

                                                            hair flecked with white paint

                                                            from newly pristine walls,

                                                            to fetch new lampshades

                                                            piled like hats from a car

                                                            pulled up beneath the balcony –

                                                            the balcony where we’ve put

                                                            potted autumn flowers:

                                                            a first small sign of our own.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Приспособяване/Accommodation

                                              A bafflement of carrier bags in the corner shop.

                                              Peeling goalposts on what I took to be a swamp.

                                              Wolves that slink through the dusk the streetlights

                                              recast as pet dogs. Gunshots are fireworks

                                              and the lime-green depth charges of summer

                                              are horse chestnuts ripening under my balcony.

                                              Amongst cubist monuments, apartment blocks,

                                              light spills from doorways, crackling radio voices.

                                              A kitchen chair left out on the pavement

                                              as if for a tired passer-by. Tilted stones

                                              cracked open by weather extremes.

                                              Magpies squatting rooftops. A look of home.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips
'Accommodation' was first published in Raceme magazine.

Моментът на пристигане/The moment of arrival

                                        On that small kitchen counter at 4am,

                                        I’m looking at packets and equipment.

                                        It’s dark outside still, the dawn

                                        a promising stripe across the distance.

                                        Already neighbours are stirring:

                                        patchwork window glows, first car

                                        in the street, a cough, a door latch

                                        only just audibly lifted …

                                        When does transit end? Beneath

                                        folded boarding card print-outs,

                                        an unpacked rucksack leans

                                        into the shadow of a table.

                                        An idea of home is coming together.

                                        In this flat where I will be for now,

                                        there’s coffee on the sideboard,

                                        first trace here of shaping a life.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

В градината на баща ми/In my father’s garden

                                                        Flutterings by the back door:

                                                        what might have been petals

                                                        lifted away in a scatter of colour.

                                                        I hadn’t thought he’d plant

                                                        particular species to attract

                                                        Peacocks, Cabbage Whites,

                                                        Red Admirals, Common Blues.

                                                        His butterfly enthusiasm

                                                        lasted a summer – although

                                                        the flowers returned each year

                                                        with their diligent attendants,

                                                        he moved on to migratory birds,

                                                        then slow-worms that seethed

                                                        through his compost heap.

                                                        Nature still surprised him –

                                                        the resilience of flora and fauna

                                                        while rocks the sea fretted at

                                                        smoothed and crumbled

                                                        or lumpish tar beached on shingle.

                                                        His garden was never tame:

                                                        it frayed into the wild.


Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Черен чай с лимон/Black tea with lemon

                                                    Afternoon quietens along the valley.

                                                    The last of the hay’s been cut

                                                    and here comes our host,

                                                    scythe shouldered, up the lane.

                                                    His wave dispels premonition.

                                                    He’s not Death, but Life –

                                                    and a life long-lived on this land

                                                    that occupies him with its tasks.

                                                    High contrails might reattach us

                                                    to ours – although they disperse

                                                    as quickly as they form above

                                                    these knuckled granite peaks.

                                                    On the balcony’s half-gutted sofa,

                                                    we’re waiting on the sunset

                                                    and firefly hour, star patterns

                                                    unfamiliarly bright …

                                                    And she cuts up through the orchard,

                                                    a tray clinking with cups.

                                                    ‘Before tea, there is tea,’ she says.

                                                    ‘Black tea with lemon.’

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Градинарство/Horticulture

                                                         It is not entirely necessary to be modern.

                                                         I was in amongst the seedlings

                                                         and she was explaining

                                                         how she used techniques from way back

                                                         to graft rootstock for hybrids.

                                                         There were flowers she hadn’t yet

                                                         found a name for in that shed.

                                                         Time opened out. For a moment,

                                                         its metronome insistence pulsed

                                                         into silence. That was a lie.

                                                         What endured were the seeds

                                                         and the soil marks in pots

                                                         like the highest tides had reached

                                                         along rhynes that saved them.

                                                         We are well drained.

                                                         Tired out, we’ll be sitting,

                                                         silhouetted by fountained water,

                                                         and that will be what we have –

                                                         a sense of where we are

                                                         spelled out in changeable waters.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Споразумения за вечеря/Dinner arrangements

                                                          It was crouching at the big clear sheet

                                                          which protected the latest excavations,

                                                          the passage of feet and the smell

                                                          of rose oil in the underground –

                                                          it had me shouting into a mobile

                                                          about where we should meet and how.

                                                          And, of course, it would all be fine

                                                          and, next thing you know, here we are,

                                                          with those playful cats and the view

                                                          across darkness between blocks.

                                                          There’s a mountain out there

                                                          and a dilemma on the table:

                                                          your hospitality thwarted

                                                          by an absence of the right glasses.


Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips