Sunday 29 October 2017

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

Friday 20 October 2017

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

Friday 13 October 2017

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


Saturday 7 October 2017

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

Sunday 1 October 2017

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.