Честит Великден Happy Easter

 In the quiet of Easter morning,

the children are all anticipation.

We are prone in our bed,

rumpling the cover into a sea.

Light doesn’t so much insist

as wash against the windows.

The year cleanses itself.

This game of waves flings up

rubbery dog fish, spiny crustaceans.

At the point where water laps

at rock pools and shingle,

our daughter reaches out,

finds a black-and-tan egg case,

hope washed up, an angel’s purse.

Bulgaria's Easter traditions are rich and various: you can read more about them here.

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Цветница

On the cusp of tulip season

in our mid-spring garden

colours break through damp grey:

pie-eyed crocus, fried-egg plants,

daffodils, snowdrops, keen annuals.

Blossom fills out the teetering branches.

Somewhere else (not far, not wild),

on this Palm Sunday, Flower Day,

visits and greetings, tables laid

for those who’ve come to say

Честит имен ден!

in living room, hall or kitchen.

The smell of loam and petals

the same in both our houses.

Sunday 13 April this year is both Palm Sunday and Flower Day – a name-day for all those in Bulgaria whose names derive from flowers. 

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

The Old Bell Tower

From sharp edges of Atlantic weather,

bungalows, ring roads, Saxon churches,

Europe proceeds to shallow roofs,

slate yards, balconies, onion domes:

pragmatic architectural variations

might easily be mistaken

for proof of differences set in stone.

History emerges from perspective;

sky darkens from the past.

The silence of bells is the same

no matter what the language,

and yet with a little learning
I might just hear
footsteps, stirrups, sword-blades –

whatever it is that’s gathering in those clouds.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Young Bulgarian Woman

Head-scarved and pensive, it might just be

That she’s on her way to a neighbour’s house.

There’s been word in the village, perhaps,

And these first few cautious days have passed.

“New-born, he’s already lifting suns.

In our hearts, we’ll see love planted.

Knowing now that, after times

Of beginning, growing, waiting,

Life’s tenacity endures,

All we can say is ‘welcome’.”

With that, perhaps, she’ll move on

To promises affirmed across the generations.

Sunday 30 March is Mother's Day in Britain (Bulgaria's was on International Women's Day: see the post for 8 March below).

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

Annunciation

Five storeys up, in that nondescript room

overlooking hospital car park,

tangled thorns on waste ground patches,

you flinched when the sensor

touched and slid across your belly.

On the screen, grey flecks swirled,

coalesced like a mathematical equation

solving itself, a satellite image

of stratospheric cloud formations.

Although later you admitted

stirrings of renascent faith, for now

the lubricant dried in curls on your skin.

‘It’s not exactly the Annunciation,’ you said.

Then the printer whirred, and there it was,

in black and white: indistinct shapes

of bulging head, ribcage, limbs;

the good news of our first unborn.

As you wiped yourself clean,

stepped out of the shapeless gown,

the nurse, resetting equipment

for her next mother, could not resist:

‘My father’s name was Gabriel, you know.’

25 March is the Feast of the Annunciation or, in Bulgarian, Благовещение. In the UK it is also known as Lady Day, the first of the year's quarter days, and was, in fact, New Year's Day until the middle of the 18th century. 

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips 

The Old Crate

Where did he get them from, my dad,

those old wooden crates which he filled

with tools, gloves, engine parts,

light bulbs, tulip bulbs, bulbs of garlic?

They’d be stacked in garage and greenhouse,

propping each other on corner pegs,

contents hidden, for the most part,

by stained and splintering sides –

or occasionally they’d appear in the kitchen,

when it was time to make ready for planting

or he’d picked too many Bramleys from the tree.

It was how he carried things around,

filling a crate with what he’d need for a day

at the allotment, fishing on the canal bank,

or taking chrysanthemums, carrots, onions

to the village horticultural show.

Sometimes one would give way,

or be given away, and somehow

he’d replace it with one just as battered,

bartered for at a market stall

or agricultural suppliers –

and we’d go on living amongst them,

his clutter-box leaning towers,

his cabinets of curiosities.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Old Man from the Village

That age is not a lessening –

time is not a whittling down

until we’re next to nothing –

that somewhere still

there is the boy who played

on the balcony, found

adventure in the forest;

the young buck who sat

late into the night, sang

for love and supper;

the father, the farmer,

the one who endured.

That age is not a lessening

in the face, the eyes

of an old man from the village.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips