Friday 25 March 2016

Баща и син/Father and son


For Nikola and Sam

The thump and weight of the newborn –
I thought I’d got used to it, but there,
amongst monitors, gowns, a choice
of CDs and the news of an assassination,
he rose up from IV scans and screamed.

In those conversational cross-currents,
some kind of bond began and down
corridors busy with emergencies,
he arrived in time – first breath
with the definite hesitancy
of an opening chord: outline
of a knowledge which would grow
and sharpen with every shift and jag –
the mornings waking up
with this whole new life between us.

Friday 18 March 2016

Поглеждайки нагоре/Looking up




Flat out on a hillock,
we’d lie in wait
for perspective shifts,
the great curve,
the rolling of the earth.

Nothing so much
disturbed our view
of high-altitude jet streaks,
cumulus hatching into
the far sky’s
inverted geography.

Amongst ambitions
flitting and darting
across the flight paths
of swallows, we’d plot
dispersal routes, ways out
through bracken beds –
not back up the lane
but over fenced land
where cattle hulked
and lives in future tense
took shape with all
the fixity of vapour.




Friday 11 March 2016

Жена с лешникови очи/Woman with hazel eyes


I can’t say much
because those details
at the roadside
are no more than clues.

Cattle grunted and shifted.
We lit cigarettes.
We talked again
of where we were.

I was at a loss
in this geography.

On the city streets,
I was far more at home.


Friday 4 March 2016

Геология/Geology


Out in the deep blue,
the crumpled plates of our world
are locative coordinates
in this landscape that eludes
all metaphors and similes.

We are here –
and unexpectedly –
like records of old fishing towns,
mismatched maps,
a staggered memory
of being in or on or at.

Colour is a blaze
across the ice fields,
an extravagance,
a touching base.

Against the swell of the Earth,
rock faces sheer against horizons.

The red flare billows out and snaps
against those vagaries, our words.