Ябълките на пазара/Apples at the market

                                                  At the edge of our knowledge, there’s talk

                                                  of exo-planets orbiting far suns.

                                                  Cross-hatched shadows of branches bud

                                                  in the street lamps’ pavement splashes.

                                                  We’ve found a new home ourselves

                                                  and while that bride’s white lace furls

                                                  across a train seat as they’re toasting

                                                  their afternoon marriage, I’m inferring

                                                  they’re making a kind of escape

                                                  from indifference or disapproval

                                                  and hoping they’ll have had the best

                                                  of the day’s intermittent weather.

                                                  Not so far from where we’ll be,

                                                  we slipped past bakers, delivery vans,

                                                  and under the eaves of the market

                                                  where, as sharp air steamed our breath, 

                                                  cropped herbs suggested spring

                                                  and apples laid out on a stall

                                                  offered up their own conclusion

                                                  that ripeness, ripeness is all.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Бели цветя над София/White flowers over Sofia

                                            As ice melts into mastika, a soft torus forms,

                                            billows into clear liquor, turns it to cloud.

                                            We’re already high, up here on the top floor

                                            where windows give out on scalloped roofs

                                            and the rain that was drizzling has thickened

                                            to flakes that drift between tall buildings.

                                           For the moment, the first few days of spring

                                           are spent and all that we remember are

                                           conversations that spiral like weather effects.

                                           We’ve been walking through future anthologies

                                           and now, in this almost empty restaurant,

                                           we’re here, we’re talking, we’re almost home.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Тя сънува/She dreams

                                                             За Лидия/For Lydia

                                                  I don’t remember singing lullabies,

                                                  though perhaps I did those first few months.

                                                  You slept between us, arms spread,

                                                  and fingers doing their best to clutch

                                                  at her straw hair and curling in on themselves.

                                                  Only half-awake then, perhaps, we murmured

                                                  words and rhymes that comforted.

                                                  We were reassuring ourselves

                                                  as much as inventing how we’d cope

                                                  with you, this new responsibility –

                                                  someone we couldn’t help but love

                                                  even then, in our most helpless moments.

                                                  Light flecks through curtains

                                                  and your first stretch

                                                  would have us wide awake again

                                                  and adjusting to those very early days.

                                                 You weren’t so easily appeased –

                                                 your snotty complaint a reminder

                                                 that we’re happiest when we dream

                                                 and at our loneliest too.


Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Бостанджийски/Gourds

About as gnarled and mottled and nobbled

as I am. That feeling of being released

from time. That simple unconcern.

That just being That being here

and now and not thinking.

That emptiness. That moment

before everything had to be.

That theory which pushes us back

to the oscillation of particles

(which may never have existed)

in the vast loneliness of space.

And then dragged us forward

into consciousness and mapping

those horizons and a grammar

that we take for granted

and the whole concept

of vegetables and land and shops

and our sitting here, in a kitchen,

with what we are about to receive

and for which we can only be

inadequately thankful.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips