Градината след женитба/The garden after marriage

These days we might recall

how even in a garden we ignored –

its grass clumps tangled

across cracked earth patches –

something was at work to bring

flecks of distant wilderness in

and how, waking in our new state,

with no more to go on than those

who were having to reinvent theirs

in a different kind of aftermath

(the adjustments reported hourly

on the battery wireless by the sink)

we’d be attuning ourselves to birdsong

from washing lines and TV aerials

and that view of a city emerging

from its own divisions which sat

like scenery behind untended borders

where plants we couldn’t name came into bloom.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Отражения на жълт/Reflections in yellow

Like a fountain in a Japanese garden

designed to accentuate silence,

the soft furl of waves at lake’s edge

is as close to peace as we’ll come

on humid days of rainless thunder.

The washed-up spoils we find here –

the fishing floats, corks, edgeless glass –

are not much to shore against thoughts

which flit and dart like midges at the surface

and flense what calm there was.

Something culpable, though, too

in this liquid tristia – as if regret

alone amounted to atonement

for things which were never said

nor snatched by the havering breeze.

In the island monastery’s yard,

his unsearching eyes look up, half-blind

to the clouds’ dispersing vagaries –

and that, for now, is enough

or that’s enough now –

and God is once more that parent

at the side of the road, ushering

children onto the verge, away

from the traffic which veers up

and out of shot beyond the water.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Вкъщи/At home

Where home was once

we strolled, we smiled,

we were happy enough

to stay silent.

On the balcony then,

that narrow balcony,

that’s where we were

by roses overgrown.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

В килера/The larder

A half-dark lined with cooling tiles,

her larder’s lowered temperature

had a feel of spring throughout the year.

A sliced ham hock’s moon face

among cheeses wrapped in paper,

onions pulled only that day

from their patch behind the house –

and the smells of the place like a kind

of promise. To be sent in there to fetch

and carry was to step back through years

of graft and preservation – those seasons

of bottling, pickling, salting.

It will have gone now, taken out

by those who’d improve the place

sold on probate not so long ago.

No room for a larder in the modern house –

although you might find traces of it again

in a fruit and veg shop’s ranked fennel bulbs,

the slick shuck of leek leaves, the tang

of vinegar from a newly reopened jar.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Временен отдих/A momentary reprieve

Grey clouds muscling in on higher sunlit banks

accumulate like signs of uncertainty now

we’re hurrying home across a makeshift bridge

and unable to face catching each other’s eye.

The rain holds off for only so long –

until here we are, drenched by a deluge

we should have had the sense to see coming.

This might be the season’s hope dispersing

in petals washing down through storm gutters

and somewhere a shrill finch silencing its song.

Only clearing now, the sky’s mood has gone

and ours might lift too at each flower left intact

on the rosebush cascades, a ripening sheen

emerging into view, spreading out along the street.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Географията/The geography

From another side of Europe,

intimations of how we might

fit in. And there, yes,

the suggestion of sap rising

and rain coming down.

In the early nineteenth-century,

John Smith, picture dealer,

took ship for St Petersburg,

spent guineas he’d earned

from sales of gilt.

For him, the continent

was an opportunity.

He took it – and thrived,

named his house for the town

in Holland where he apprenticed.

And then on to Russia

and The Hermitage,

ahead of his time

and the geography.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Дървото на череши в Hamilton Road/The cherry tree in Hamilton Road

The lopped branch has put the tree in a sulk.

That’s the technical term we learnt

from the arborealist who came to treat

the exuberant cherry he would cut.

They’d built our houses on orchard land,

terraces ranked – for all their ideals –

according to social status. Ours was in

the mid-range – though these days

it’s not so hard to be priced out of the market.

Every year we still get fruit from it,

but the cherry tree’s not so happy with us now.

It sulks – that is the word – by the fence

and lets the finches in there first.

On summer mornings, perhaps,

we’ll get up early and catch it unawares.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips