Маргаритки/Daisies

                                                           Light determines what you look at.

                                                           Today, for instance, the patterns

                                                           across these crusted facades

                                                           assume a Cubist air. They’re

                                                           flung lapidary shapes

                                                           against variable perspectives

                                                           like something instinctive

                                                           or work by the faux sauvage …

                                                           It’s as if every unnecessary wire

                                                           marks out a territorial plane.

                                                           The garden operates

                                                           to an entirely different geometry:

                                                           a continual branching out,

                                                           a breath that speculates its own future.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Натюрморт с вази/Still life with vases

1

Always having to start

from here – notepad, sketchbook,

crumpled torus of a metro ticket –

to find definition in a frame

where the long world’s connections

might be allowed to fade away …

Saying I’ll keep my eye on things

scrupulously forms up

into a premise. These vases,

for instance, are clearly

without precedent

in their particular arrangement –

albeit in recessional focus,

the unreal real of representation.

2

A horn’s distant croak can’t help

but be a lorry in the mind’s eye –

we’ll take that as read: some

situation unfurling on the bypass

in changing afternoon light,

an unarticulated insignificance.

It is not the discovery of form

in the scrupulous observation

of the actually existing

components of the real

so much as … what?

These unfiltered things.

John Coltrane plays himself out:

endless variations on the air.

3

I’d hazard a guess

that observation occurs

in the interim, the pelter

of blossom that cascades

between apartment blocks –

and, yes, these vases that hold

something resembling light

in their momentariness,

in those emotive chords,

that arrangement of fingers

on a fretboard, unnoticed

until now. That’s art,

he said shruggingly –

the collector during the storm.

4

Nothing’s fixed.

Except, perhaps, this.

The solidity of chemicals.

Another ideology

that the mountain invites.

Rivers have no such concerns.

Denial is something you might shout

in the street. There’s a confusion

of pronouns at the crossroads.

It’s not so bad. We’re learning

to live with everything that changes.

Like a prototype villanelle,

the recurrence of thoughts

stakes its claim at significance.

5

On a Sunday morning,

the aftermath is summed up

in a very few words.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Петък/Friday

                                                     Two green flecks of light –

                                                     they're spring finches –

                                                     flit and dart above the heads

                                                     of kids out dancing the xopo

                                                     in the shadow of Vitosha.

                                                     It’s May –

                                                     and a conflict

                                                     of anniversaries plays out

                                                     against the logic

                                                     of the weather.

                                                    Who’d predict

                                                    that, in saving his skin,

                                                    I’d be hit

                                                    by some anonymous force,

                                                    laid up by it?

                                                    You can’t always see

                                                    everything coming.

                                                    Least of all, fists

                                                    or the pink spray

                                                    of flowers put out

                                                    to gather up

                                                    these flecks of spring light

                                                    that are ripening

                                                    our neighbour’s cherries.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Вид на очакване/Air of anticipation

                                                        Gleaning a broken road surface,

                                                        pigeons hold out

                                                        until it’s almost too late

                                                        to escape a taxi turning into the street.

                                                        As if it’s torn loose from a different sky,

                                                        a square of blue moves through

                                                        the deepening overcast.

                                                        Pathfinding for echeloned jets

                                                        rehearsing for tomorrow’s parade,

                                                        it passes from east to west.

                                                        On the face of it, we’re in for change –

                                                        or more likely a recurrence –

                                                        as the old guard practise their footwork

                                                        and the rain, when it comes,

                                                        brings green back to the trees

                                                        and washes out all consequence.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips