Sudden Summer / Happiness Beyond

Sudden Summer
(Not a Word Cloud)

Is this moon new or young,
a sliver or a crescent, silver
or golden in the deep blue,
the newly deep sky, is it
striking or dazzling or
mesmerising?

Is this a late spring, belated
and all the more welcome,
bursting with life, with green,
bright green, saturated
with rain and sunshine,
saturated with colour and
heat, heat unfamiliar and
all the more welcome, or is it
sudden summer?

Is this life at last, is this joy,
is this joy of life, is it zest,
is it just new life-force or is it
happiness or elation or
bliss?

Reality, as it laps up against
the shores of your eyes and 
your ears and your nose, reality
as it washes over the leas
of your skin and seeps
beneath, cannot be captured in
words, not even in verse: reality,
so dense it feels like a dream,
is not a dream cloud nor a
word cloud.

Although this poem would make
a good one, with the message of
sudden summer sounding out
like birdcall, flooded with light
and colour, steeped in joy,
as if words were written from life
and for life, as if words were part
of life, of the wide earth and
the deep sky and the reality
beyond, of the ever-flowing
life-force.

Christina Egan ©2024

Happiness Beyond
(Word Cloud)

Your life is a green reality,
it reads in large green letters,
and newly young;
the sky is golden at last,
it states in fine golden letters,
and saturated with joy;
eyes and ears are bursting
with wide bright light,
it adds in silvery white;
and at the edge there is
happiness beyond colour
on deep-blue ground.

These are welcome words,
sudden and possibly deep,
a mesmerising message
from slivers of verse in your ears,
from the new dream poem,
from the word cloud
of Sudden summer:
Your life is a green reality
saturated with joy
under the newly young moon.

Christina Egan ©2024

Inspired by the word cloud of the poem Sudden summer and written on the same day.

Hinweisschilder

Hinweisschilder

I.

Dies Gedicht hat keine Bilder,
denn die Welt ist ein Gedicht!
Überall sind Hinweisschilder,
überall Scheinwerferlicht!

Doch wir tappen durch die Tage,
rumpeln, rempeln, fallen hin.
Sehn wir je, dann ohne Farbe,
ohne Muster, ohne Sinn.

II.

Manches wird herbeigeschafft,
anderes herbeigeschaffen.
Manches wird herangerafft,
anderes herangelassen.

Manches wird herbeigeredet,
anderes herbeigeschrieben,
manches auch herbeigebetet
oder gar herbeigeschwiegen.

Christina Egan ©2024

You may wonder why I label philosophical musings “Religion” or why my poems on “Religion” do not refer more to a certain creed. Yet for me personally, there is no philosophy without religion. God is present everywhere, whether we feel it or not, and our life is a search for God, whether we know it or not.

As regards Christianity, my poetry is very much inspired by the Scriptures, the hymns, the liturgy, the imagery. I probably owe more to Martin Luther than to any other writer. All German speakers do. It also seems to me that in this secular society, I would most put people off by mentioning that I am a Catholic.

speaking through a mask / masked ball

The poem speaking through a mask was inspired by photographs in the Tottenham Community Press and published by the same newspaper in TCP Issue 43, February 2021. It continues as the Haringey Community Press.

Tottenham is full of art in in very bright colours: graffiti on walls, mosaics on houses, paintings on roll-shutters of shops…

Image: Red camera eye of HAL 9000 (from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’).
Julian Mendez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Unterm Abendstern

Tall brick chimney with blackbird sitting on top.
Blackbird on English chimney.
Photograph: Christina Egan ©2018.

glanztanzend / dazzle-dancing

A handful of hand-crafted Christmas cards in different styles and colours.
A handful of hand-crafted Christmas cards in different styles and colours.

The poem does what it describes: inventing words, lining them up, and sending them to others to greet them and cheer them up!

The newly coined terms had to be re-created in English – where they do of course not look as impressive. “lindwurmwörter”, for instance, really sounds and looks as long as a dragon, while “dragon’s tail words” looks like three words, even though I added the tail in to get a similar effect in meaning and length.

In England, many people hang Christmas cards up on golden strings. During the festive seasons of 2022/23 and 2023/24, I crafted many greeting cards myself, each of them unique.

Seasonal greeting cards. Artwork: Christina Egan ©2022/©2023/©2024. Photographs: Miriam Hornsby ©2024.

I am Singing my Song

Jug in shiny bright colours (yellow, red, blue, black) in front of yellow cloth..

Navajo pottery. Photograph:
Woody Hibbard, CC BY 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons.

Word cloud in green, red, blue, black on yellow. Words in the middle: singing, about, face, song, trees.
Word cloud in green, red, blue, black on yellow. Words in the middle: singing, about, face, song, trees.
Word cloud in green, red, blue, black on yellow, simply typed up as a square.

Three word clouds of this poem: one typed up on a Word document with all repetitions, two designed on the Simple Word Cloud Generator (left) and WordItOut (right), with the frequency of the words represented by their size and position. (You can click on the images to enlarge them.)

Via WordItOut, you can order badges or key-rings with the right-hand word cloud.

Lautlose Rede

Lautlose Rede

Kurven von Tinte und Ketten von Lettern,
Wörter und Worte wie bunte Girlanden
steigen und ziehn über Erde und Meer…
Ketten von Lettern, die leuchten und flattern,
bunte Girlanden, die kreisen und landen,
zaubern dir lautlose Rede her…

Es ist bloß Papier, es sind bloß Gedanken,
doch bringen sie Herzen und Häuser ins Wanken
und fallen gleich Samen in wartenden Sand.
Was ist das Geheimnis der Blätter, der Briefe?
Als ob eine Seele die andere riefe…
Als ob ein Geist den andern entflammt!

Christina Egan ©2023

Three letters on colourful paper, with a real flower matching the ones pictured.

Indigo Pond

Indigo Pond
(Hiroshige, Wisteria)

Deep blue sky, deep blue pond.
Two black-and-white feathers
drifting – no, two ducks!
Two specks in the indigo
like two pearls in enamel.

*

The arched wooden bridge
is as steep as a rainbow,
exasperating.
So we meet only rarely
right above the brilliant blue.

Christina Egan © 2016

Lower half dark blue water, upper half very steep bridge and branches in cream colours, dark blue strip of sky at top

Utagawa Hiroshige: Wisteria at Kameido Tenjin Shrine (1856). One hundred famous views of Edo, No. 57.

With thanks to the Royal Academy of Arts for the postcard and to the British Museum for the digital image.

In this Japanese verse pattern, the first three lines of each poem could stand for themselves, while the last two add another aspect.

Farbe ist Leben / [Colour, Life, Silence]

Shimmering, milky, rosy piece of rock, resembling the sea at sunset.

Inspired by the word cloud Colour, Life, Silence of the 25 English poems I have written over the past months (generated and designed thanks to the Simple Word Cloud Generator).
The word cloud created from this poem, in turn, brought up the corresponding German words, with a number of other words expressing the central term “poem”.
“Erschrieben” is a word I made up for bringing about something by writing, while the regular word “erleben” means experiencing and is passive… or perhaps not!

A New Poem is Being Born