Пред очите ни/In front of our eyes

Close to, yes,

it’s possible

to detect the grain

in a slither of pine

(not so much the trees –

and never mind the wood)

or the ants’ cave in a clod.

Through such things

we might also glimpse

the big picture,

the epic shot,

the vista

of distant planets,

stars, anomalies,

the warp and weft

of space-time.

Let’s hear it too

for peripheries,

for the almost unnoticed

flap of plastic sheeting

in the wind that looks

like someone waving,

the pepper untouched

on the pavement,

flickers of light

that blaze the windows

of new apartments

as the sun clears

a ridge of houses

and the focus shifts

to a new vantage again.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Дългата зима/Long winter

                                                     I’m thinking more of solid things –

                                                     what we count on returning or what
                                                     stands by us: the wintry fields
                                                     this morning’s frost crust gripped
                                                     (the frost, of course, would melt);
                                                     or asphalt gritted for the weather;
                                                     statues, gargoyles, abutments;
                                                     or wood or steel or marble, flesh.

                                                     I’m thinking more of solid things

                                                     as words become sullied, put
                                                     to all the uses in the world.
                                                     A crate’s brute fact, ripe fruit
                                                     kept in cold storage start to look
                                                     like hope while we wait for the thaw.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Снегната страна/Snow country

                                                                 Echoes fall softly.

                                                                 The landscape’s baffled.

                                                                 Hawks scout the suburbs,

                                                                 extend their ranges,

                                                                 take what they can.

                                                                 Dogs, too, have reached

                                                                 some kind of limit,

                                                                 sit tight on boundaries,

                                                                 look out on fields,

                                                                 the hawk’s domain.

                                                                 None of them

                                                                 are waiting for spring.

                                                                 Snow is the present

                                                                 and will be

                                                                 until it’s no more

                                                                 than dust on distant hills

                                                                 then gone – as if the land

                                                                 has shifted beneath them

                                                                 and they are in another country.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Сняг/Snow

                                                       A little settling and the world is changed.
                                                       Snow comforts in its vagaries –
                                                       the blurring of edges.

                                                      We would rather look

                                                      at snow than the cold hard truth.

                                                      Elsewhere in the world,

                                                      they are plotting and devising.
                                                      They are in their air-conditioned blocks.

                                                      When it melts, the snow weeps
                                                      and fingers traverse the keyboard
                                                      while they plot out our new future.


Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips