Ябълките на пазара/Apples at the market

                                                  At the edge of our knowledge, there’s talk

                                                  of exo-planets orbiting far suns.

                                                  Cross-hatched shadows of branches bud

                                                  in the street lamps’ pavement splashes.

                                                  We’ve found a new home ourselves

                                                  and while that bride’s white lace furls

                                                  across a train seat as they’re toasting

                                                  their afternoon marriage, I’m inferring

                                                  they’re making a kind of escape

                                                  from indifference or disapproval

                                                  and hoping they’ll have had the best

                                                  of the day’s intermittent weather.

                                                  Not so far from where we’ll be,

                                                  we slipped past bakers, delivery vans,

                                                  and under the eaves of the market

                                                  where, as sharp air steamed our breath, 

                                                  cropped herbs suggested spring

                                                  and apples laid out on a stall

                                                  offered up their own conclusion

                                                  that ripeness, ripeness is all.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Бели цветя над София/White flowers over Sofia

                                            As ice melts into mastika, a soft torus forms,

                                            billows into clear liquor, turns it to cloud.

                                            We’re already high, up here on the top floor

                                            where windows give out on scalloped roofs

                                            and the rain that was drizzling has thickened

                                            to flakes that drift between tall buildings.

                                           For the moment, the first few days of spring

                                           are spent and all that we remember are

                                           conversations that spiral like weather effects.

                                           We’ve been walking through future anthologies

                                           and now, in this almost empty restaurant,

                                           we’re here, we’re talking, we’re almost home.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Тя сънува/She dreams

                                                             За Лидия/For Lydia

                                                  I don’t remember singing lullabies,

                                                  though perhaps I did those first few months.

                                                  You slept between us, arms spread,

                                                  and fingers doing their best to clutch

                                                  at her straw hair and curling in on themselves.

                                                  Only half-awake then, perhaps, we murmured

                                                  words and rhymes that comforted.

                                                  We were reassuring ourselves

                                                  as much as inventing how we’d cope

                                                  with you, this new responsibility –

                                                  someone we couldn’t help but love

                                                  even then, in our most helpless moments.

                                                  Light flecks through curtains

                                                  and your first stretch

                                                  would have us wide awake again

                                                  and adjusting to those very early days.

                                                 You weren’t so easily appeased –

                                                 your snotty complaint a reminder

                                                 that we’re happiest when we dream

                                                 and at our loneliest too.


Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Бостанджийски/Gourds

About as gnarled and mottled and nobbled

as I am. That feeling of being released

from time. That simple unconcern.

That just being That being here

and now and not thinking.

That emptiness. That moment

before everything had to be.

That theory which pushes us back

to the oscillation of particles

(which may never have existed)

in the vast loneliness of space.

And then dragged us forward

into consciousness and mapping

those horizons and a grammar

that we take for granted

and the whole concept

of vegetables and land and shops

and our sitting here, in a kitchen,

with what we are about to receive

and for which we can only be

inadequately thankful.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Пред очите ни/In front of our eyes

Close to, yes,

it’s possible

to detect the grain

in a slither of pine

(not so much the trees –

and never mind the wood)

or the ants’ cave in a clod.

Through such things

we might also glimpse

the big picture,

the epic shot,

the vista

of distant planets,

stars, anomalies,

the warp and weft

of space-time.

Let’s hear it too

for peripheries,

for the almost unnoticed

flap of plastic sheeting

in the wind that looks

like someone waving,

the pepper untouched

on the pavement,

flickers of light

that blaze the windows

of new apartments

as the sun clears

a ridge of houses

and the focus shifts

to a new vantage again.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Дългата зима/Long winter

                                                     I’m thinking more of solid things –

                                                     what we count on returning or what
                                                     stands by us: the wintry fields
                                                     this morning’s frost crust gripped
                                                     (the frost, of course, would melt);
                                                     or asphalt gritted for the weather;
                                                     statues, gargoyles, abutments;
                                                     or wood or steel or marble, flesh.

                                                     I’m thinking more of solid things

                                                     as words become sullied, put
                                                     to all the uses in the world.
                                                     A crate’s brute fact, ripe fruit
                                                     kept in cold storage start to look
                                                     like hope while we wait for the thaw.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Снегната страна/Snow country

                                                                 Echoes fall softly.

                                                                 The landscape’s baffled.

                                                                 Hawks scout the suburbs,

                                                                 extend their ranges,

                                                                 take what they can.

                                                                 Dogs, too, have reached

                                                                 some kind of limit,

                                                                 sit tight on boundaries,

                                                                 look out on fields,

                                                                 the hawk’s domain.

                                                                 None of them

                                                                 are waiting for spring.

                                                                 Snow is the present

                                                                 and will be

                                                                 until it’s no more

                                                                 than dust on distant hills

                                                                 then gone – as if the land

                                                                 has shifted beneath them

                                                                 and they are in another country.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips