Sunday 27 May 2018

Маргаритки/Daisies



                                                           Light determines what you look at.
                                                           Today, for instance, the patterns
                                                           across these crusted facades
                                                           assume a Cubist air. They’re
                                                           flung lapidary shapes
                                                           against variable perspectives
                                                           like something instinctive
                                                           or work by the faux sauvage

                                                           It’s as if every unnecessary wire
                                                           marks out a territorial plane.
                                                           The garden operates
                                                           to an entirely different geometry:
                                                           a continual branching out,
                                                           a breath that speculates its own future.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Sunday 20 May 2018

Натюрморт с вази/Still life with vases



1

Always having to start
from here – notepad, sketchbook,
crumpled torus of a metro ticket –
to find definition in a frame
where the long world’s connections
might be allowed to fade away …

Saying I’ll keep my eye on things
scrupulously forms up
into a premise. These vases,
for instance, are clearly
without precedent
in their particular arrangement –

albeit in recessional focus,
the unreal real of representation.

2

A horn’s distant croak can’t help
but be a lorry in the mind’s eye –
we’ll take that as read: some
situation unfurling on the bypass
in changing afternoon light,
an unarticulated insignificance.

It is not the discovery of form
in the scrupulous observation
of the actually existing
components of the real
so much as … what?
These unfiltered things.

John Coltrane plays himself out:
endless variations on the air.

3

I’d hazard a guess
that observation occurs
in the interim, the pelter
of blossom that cascades
between apartment blocks –
and, yes, these vases that hold

something resembling light
in their momentariness,

in those emotive chords,
that arrangement of fingers
on a fretboard, unnoticed
until now. That’s art,
he said shruggingly –
the collector during the storm.

4

Nothing’s fixed.
Except, perhaps, this.
The solidity of chemicals.
Another ideology

that the mountain invites.
Rivers have no such concerns.

Denial is something you might shout
in the street. There’s a confusion
of pronouns at the crossroads.
It’s not so bad. We’re learning
to live with everything that changes.

Like a prototype villanelle,
the recurrence of thoughts
stakes its claim at significance.

5

On a Sunday morning,
the aftermath is summed up
in a very few words.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips


Monday 14 May 2018

Петък/Friday




                                                     Two green flecks of light –
                                                     they're spring finches –
                                                     flit and dart above the heads
                                                     of kids out dancing the xopo
                                                     in the shadow of Vitosha.

                                                     It’s May –
                                                     and a conflict
                                                     of anniversaries plays out
                                                     against the logic
                                                     of the weather.

                                                    Who’d predict
                                                    that, in saving his skin,
                                                    I’d be hit
                                                    by some anonymous force,
                                                    laid up by it?

                                                    You can’t always see
                                                    everything coming.

                                                    Least of all, fists
                                                    or the pink spray
                                                    of flowers put out
                                                    to gather up
                                                    these flecks of spring light
                                                    that are ripening
                                                    our neighbour’s cherries.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Monday 7 May 2018

Вид на очакване/Air of anticipation


                                                        Gleaning a broken road surface,
                                                        pigeons hold out
                                                        until it’s almost too late
                                                        to escape a taxi turning into the street.

                                                        As if it’s torn loose from a different sky,
                                                        a square of blue moves through
                                                        the deepening overcast.
                                                        Pathfinding for echeloned jets
                                                        rehearsing for tomorrow’s parade,
                                                        it passes from east to west.

                                                        On the face of it, we’re in for change –
                                                        or more likely a recurrence –
                                                        as the old guard practise their footwork
                                                        and the rain, when it comes,
                                                        brings green back to the trees
                                                        and washes out all consequence.


Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips