Friday 27 November 2015

Изчакване/Waiting



It will or won’t happen
to us. The sky folds
into bleached distances.
Cloud cover anticipates all.

Keep it simple. Trees make
hieroglyphs and here,
in this vast space
we’d like to call our own,

the trying vocabulary
dissipates. That’s enough.
Love occurs. I’m not
at a loss any more.

In the interim, I’m waiting
for you to come home.





Friday 20 November 2015

Общ език/Common language


And because beginnings are precious,
I’m back again. It’s not so far
and all the imaginary occasions
play out across landscapes,
still lifes, portraits I seem
to know. Nothing precise –
but in these brush-strokes words,
reminders of so much
I’ve yet to know.

In the kitchen that day,
we anticipated
precarious coincidence –
faces, bicycles, hills,
meetings in the park –
and then, as if intent
on becoming a prediction,
these peppers that hang
behind us, their solidity,
the first painting of yours I saw.

This is our 100th post on Colourful Star since we launched the project in January 2014. Since then we've been posting our collaborations every Friday and at other times to mark special dates or anniversaries. This post also features on the international poetry website Iris News where we will also be publishing selections from Colourful Star in the future. You can find it here with a translation into Italian by Chiara De Luca. Many thanks to everyone who's visited any of our 100 posts so far and we hope you'll return to see how the project continues to develop. Marina, Vasilena & Tom



Friday 13 November 2015

Хризантеми/Chrysanthemums


Autumn’s late. In the garden,
you're pointing out black-eyed Susans –
we’ve been here before.

Flowers breathe. The old man,
my father, pruned chrysanthemums,
stuck them in a bucket.

At the end of our drive,
commuters passed, looked twice,
left 50p for a bunch.

The ash trees have gone
(I’ve seen that now online).
Where we lived

between the stern
coordinates of ornamental firs
there’s off-road parking.

Against the wall
of our neighbour’s garden,
the black-eyed Susans flare.





Friday 6 November 2015

Кожа/Skin


Skin bears a geography of time.
It softens and furrows.
I’d not realised, of course:
I hadn't been looking.

Around the eyes first,
then the cheeks,
the upper lip –
a contour map,
a bloom of notches.

And then there,
in the hospital
recovery room,
that unutterably
untouched face,
new skin,
another geography
waiting to happen.