Friday 27 March 2015

Езеро с лодка/Lake with boat


We might do this,
go out through the city’s
diminishing suburbs,
apartment blocks,
industrial estates,
the slip-roads,
human tarmac envelope,
and keep going until
we’re pulling over
in some lay-by
and crunching steps
along a gravel path
which narrows
and then gives out.

We might do this
and track a way
through trees,
the ardent foliage,
gnats clouding
liminal sunlight,
to the limit
of a glaucous lake
and my offering to
row out to where
we’ll be sat above
the viscid spaces
into which fish
and uncertainties glide.


Friday 20 March 2015

Пролет/Spring


How these newcomers must see us
on this first warmish day
when daffodils hold their own
and winter hangs around
at the cusp of memory.

In the street, we’re talking
about parking arrangements,
box-shifting, the bollards
put out for a moving in,
a jazz gig in another country.

As the recently eclipsed sun
goes down, I can hear myself
reiterating the words of welcome
in a cacophony of languages.



Friday 13 March 2015

Приятелството се случва/Friendship happens


Held up by a sandwich packet’s refusal
to fold and slip through the slot of a bin,
I couldn’t have known how
this recalcitrant plastic and cardboard
was playing its part in circumstance –

that, no more than six months later,
I would be sitting on a balcony
in Druzhba or, another year on,
receiving gifts in Boris Gardens.

There was little hint of spring
in that chilly March evening
and an all-but-empty lecture hall.

At the very edge of the moment
when the day might have
begun to close like any other,
a still, small voice interrupted
my delay. Six months later,
I would be sitting on a balcony
in Druzhba and, another year on,
receiving gifts in Boris Gardens.

13 March marks the anniversary of the meeting two years ago which led to Colourful Star.



Friday 6 March 2015

В кухнята/Kitchen poem


At night dreams merge.

It’s as if there’s something
I can’t avoid – the flight
upwards and outwards
over alps and plains.

In the kitchen,
we’re well met.

In the kitchen,
dreams merge.

This room
is for friends.
The guests
are on the balcony.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips