Beginning with the city

Ah, Sofia,

I want to write you a poem

but where to begin?

With your pocked facades

and unruly pavements?

With your non-stop shops and trolley cars?

The sociology of balcony design

or the semiotics of disconnected electrical wiring?

With the slow progress of pensioners

burdened with bags crammed full

of secondhand clothes and bargains from Billa?

With the kids after school in a сладкарница

laughing with disbelief into their mobile phones

or the pyjama’d men chain-smoking

between satellite dishes and sheets out to dry?

With the chess-players waiting for opponents

among the students with Шуменско bottles

on the benches that line the theatre gardens?

With your pigeons, your magpies, your jays?

With your trees coming into blossom

and newly hung with мартеници?

With the light on the snow of your mountain

or the spit and crackle of a pantograph

as a tram pulls round the corner

outside the Palace of Justice?

With the coffee and cigarette sellers

in their subterranean kiosks

and the customers crouched down

with plastic cups of espresso?

With your dog-walkers walking pert dogs

that trot in circles by the Borisova lily pond

or the crowd of commuters dispersing

through subway labyrinths and emerging into squares

and ad-hoc bazaars with snow-drops in jam-jars

and embroidered tablecloths laid out by piebald furs?

With the bagpipes keening over traffic noise

by a zebra crossing on your Yellow Pavements

or a jaunty trilling accordion by the open door

of a souvenir shop on sun-splashed Vitoshka?

With waiters laying tables outside cafes

on the first good day of spring,

with the smell of rose oil in Serdika metro,

the taste of баница, the burn of ракия

with a lightning storm one humid August,

or with the disc of the moon poised, silver,

above the gold domes of Nevsky?

Ah, Sofia,

I wanted to write you a poem

but even in plain view you’re elusive

and I am only just starting to know you –

so for now there are only beginnings,

but those beginnings, it seems, will be endless.

3/4/2018

Tom Phillips