Рози/Roses

Just above flaked paint and crusted brick

outside the kitchen door, a trio of roses

depends on nothing so much as a string

round which their tendrils twist and grip.

An inclement early summer has turned

our garden feral bucolic – its lack

of austerity’s fecund with motley,

aerial mating damson flies, excitable

finches squabbling. Dripping ferns

splay upwards like invitations.

A helicopter saws the breeze.

From the sun glints on its skis,

it’s apparently protecting us,

sending wildness off to scamper,

and for a moment at least

I can’t remember anything like this

assertion of some right to interference.

My father grew roses, their pink shades

used to hang in our living room.

All he was ever concerned with

was their smell and preventing the blight

which he knew might destroy them.

I can’t speak for him, but I suspect

he would have delighted in seeing

roses painted one day in Bulgaria.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Книги/Books

"Shucks, books," said the unexpected visitor,
a sort of suburban man from Porlock,
flicking his eyes and fingers across the shelves.

"They sit there like threats, like promises.

Like some kind of antediluvian technology.

You have these books in your house?"

And so he’s clocking titles, clocking names:

"Hemingway? Pound? This’French bird’"?

He’s after the weight of it. The tomes.

The ‘French bird’ is Marguerite Duras.

And apparently now I have too many books.

It’s what I do. Pile them up, build cases.

I usher him out between almost everything

that he and the rest might think unnecessary.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Надежда (за Левски)/Hope (for Levski)

On the one hand, crowds by a trolley stop

celebrating victory in ‘his’ stadium; on the other,

your hesitation translating a word as we walk past

the National Academy of Arts towards his monument.

No absence here more felt. The bronze face looks out

on the streets of Sofia where we walk through

divergent legacies and begin unexpected stories.

Perhaps in an underground church beside

the metro station we’re closer than we think.

Like Yeats, he became his admirers –

and not so far from the scene of that regime’s crime

linden trees paint light across their upturned faces.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Синьото езеро/The blue lake

Over just so many hills and round so many corners,

the blue lake flashes like an iris. We’d be thinking

we’re so far from home. And we are. On paper.

At the track’s end, we’ll get out and walk.

Love seems to be a kind of occupation.

In this vast space, our feet come down

on routinely overlooked marram grass patches.

I’m sure I’m not alone. And you tell me we aren’t.

Your presence shudders like the skim of birds 

across the water. Then we go into the restaurant and eat.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Сезонът на лалета/Tulip season

I will not, I can’t apologise

for architectural geometries,

that spring you came to visit.

It was the world we found

ourselves in, even now

a difficult one to imagine.

The cornices of privilege

glared over our not really

understanding the bedrock

that was being laid down.

In the garden, I took your hand.

You pointed out the colours,

the variegated tulips.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Лукове/Onions

On the porch overhanging a back garden

where, sauntering from his studio,

he’d be tinkering with the folds and burrs

of resin for a reconstructed ship’s figurehead,

we were contemplating half-empty bottles

of imported beer, thinking them

a rarity in 1987’s patchy summer.

It’s the smell of cut onions does it,

acid-sweet as our prospects in that house.

Someone standing at the kitchen-counter

with knife poised and oil spitting

might have shouted through the doorway

about something they’d heard on the news.

We had no idea. By the gas fire,

we’d scoop vegetable stew, lay cards

in a game of canasta, assume

history was nothing more than repetition.

We wrote words, words, words,

as if they might save us.

It was 1987 and in the kitchen

we chopped onions forever.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Старият манастир/The Old Monastery

Not far from the city and we’re pulling over

to wait for sheep as they amble up tarmac

for greener pasture, higher ground.

The air makes light work

in mysterious ways: no heat-haze here

now the day’s burnt off – and we’re

away again, the shepherd out of sight.

In the crux of the valley, a tower

and low tiled walls are outlines

of a hermitage; and I’m approaching

again an enclave of a faith

of which I can boast at least

a passing understanding now.

On this day, it’s said, the sky

acquires unusual translucence

for those whose belief allows it.

I can still see your face as,

by tended flowerbeds, the monk

explained how exactly years ago

he looked up through the clouds at God.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips