Sofia Metaphors
2022/Tom Phillips
1 Grid
Knowing the place
of old
from walks home
over the hill,
but brought back
now to look again
at ancient
brickwork, renovations,
the old bell, coppery
green,
displaced in its
tree …
Orange petals
flame-like in the sun,
this late
September morning,
and drying
seedpods turning brown
among a crowd of
many voices –
languages moving
in and out of range –
and this one
gathering for a celebration
with cameras and
flowers …
We approach along
horizontals,
come together,
exchange, move apart
beside the church’s
verticals:
rooftop dome,
latticed windows,
mortar growing
less orderly
down through centuries,
down through space
where this couple
will be married,
down to mosaic pavement,
foundations,
and still further,
underneath all,
what remains of Roman
tombs.
Above first small
drifts
of the coming
autumn’s leaves
and play of shadows
across tile and
earth and faces,
the sky holds onto
its blue.
2 Perspective
Drinking beer in
old Lenin Square,
overlooked now by
Saint Sofia
and authoritarian
buildings
repurposed by new authorities,
there’s warmth coming
on
in this tail-end
of summer.
History finds its feet
in the everyday –
theirs and ours -
sharing its shifting
proximities.
How to look is
where to start.
What lurks among
shaded tables,
traffic noise, vaulted
arcades
and things that
might have been?
The statue is
turning a blind eye
to ambitions that
were transformed –
as they always will
be –
from anticipated
immortality
to more modest
survival – here,
where Lenin once
surveyed the square,
overlooked now by
Saint Sofia.
3 Flow
A temple to water –
Philip Larkin’s
religion –
in this city so
far from the sea.
We could navigate
by fountains –
from City Gardens
to Presidential Palace
to the endlessly
repeating fleur-de-lis
in Banski Square,
the old baths
now housing city
history,
and, beyond that, the
hot flow of the springs.
Tram announcements
cut across
the muezzin’s
call. One man unrolls
his mat by red and
silver flowerbeds,
another taps
messages on his mobile phone
and a third asks
me for a cigarette.
Apollo holds his place,
discretely.
He is modest in
bronze,
head turned away
as if unsure
where to look
while his acolytes
haul and clank empty
bottles to the taps,
trusting in the
hope that each drop
will grant them
health, long life, as they
haul and clank
full bottles from the taps,
carrying with them
more than a mere commodity.
Tom Phillips, 24/9/2022
