ART & ARTS

Still Here (Still striding)

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Still Here

Still here:
still striding into the drizzle
across the buzzing roads
and straight across the green
with my hair getting frizzy
and my eyes getting dazzled
by the purple orbs
on the tale pale thistles

Still off-screen:
mounting the white cliff
of the sky-scraper
with my own eyes
still off-air
echoing the whistle
of the lime-green parrot
with my own voice
still off-map
facing the buffets
of the wilful winds
with my own face

Still no gloss
on top of the gloss
still no sheen
on top of the cream
upon the click of a button
the command of a machine

Still here:
still pounding
the moistened pavement
with my own feet
still brushing
the sparkling bush
with my own hands
still whispering
some half-rhymed lines
with my own lips

Christina Egan ©2023

Abstract painting of bright squares and rectangles in blue, green, orange, and yellow tones.
Paul Klee: Polyphony (1932). Kunstmuseum Basel.

For my birthday, I am posting some recent verse, which came to me during an enjoyable walk on a dull summer’s day.

I still live largely without social media, and I have still never had a smartphone, nor a motorised vehicle.

I still try to live an authentic life: walking for miles and travelling overland, reading plenty of print and writing letters by hand, growing my herbs and cooking from scratch…

This anthology of poetry is back!

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Liebe Leserinnen und Leser! Dear Readers!

Ich bin wieder da :o) ! My anthology of poetry is back!

Some of you have wondered why I have not posted anything recently. I have continued writing, of course, and have had poems published in newspapers and on calendars, which I shall all put up here also.

Two years ago, I had already published 600 of my best poems on this site, so I have raised my target from 500 to 1,000 poems! This is not about mass, though, this is about quality of poetry.

Alert observations, intense emotions, clear insights.

Vivid images and musical language.

Beauty discovered and created.

Life condensed into art.

Art celebrating life.

Half of the texts are in English and half in German, so I hope that many readers in many countries can enjoy them. My comments are in English, trusting that most of you can read them easily. Remember that automatic translations cannot convey the magic of literary language. Sometimes, I translate my verse, or rather, recreate it in the other language. (These posts are marked as Parallel poems.)

Feel free to use my poems and photos for any non-commercial purposes as long as you always give my name or the name of the site (Christina Egan – Poetry & Plays), and if it is online, link to the post or the site. (See copyright note below.)

Keep reading and reciting poetry – and perhaps writing some!

The Author, Christina Egan

Light-blue sky and light-green ocean in the background, white tombs in the foregrund; in the front, a flat marble slabs decorated with two large pink flowers, one in clay and one in plastic.
Paul Valéry’s tomb on the Cimetière marin. Photograph: Christina Egan ©2016
Creative Commons Licence

Christina Egan by Christina Egan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

In Starless Night

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

In sternloser Nacht

In sternloser Nacht
ein Silberfleck auf dem Moos:
verirrtes Fröschlein…
In den Garten, ins Gedicht
und hinaus hüpfen Frösche!

Muddy pond with tadpole amongst aquatic plants.

In the starless night
a silver speck on the moss:
a little lost frog…
In and out of my garden,
of my poems, those frogs hop!

Christina Egan © 2017

Muddy pond with waterlilies amongst greenery.

For another tanka about frogs in honour of Basho, see Waiting for the Frog.

Frog pond. Note the tiny tadpole! Photographs: Christina Egan © 2014.

Quintessence

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Quintessence

I’ll fill a crystal flask
with silver melodies,
a magic drop to last
for years and centuries.

I shall distil my days
to mellow poetry,
and distant lands will taste
the quintessence of me.

I’ll fill a crystal flask
with pearls of memory:
my solitary task,
my faithful alchemy.

The five pure elements’
fifth essence, finally,
their forces and their scents:
as fresh as fiery!

Christina Egan © 2016

Photograph: Glass flask by Eugenes, found in Syria,
3rd c. AD. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
I  had similar flasks from the Roman era in mind
when I wrote the poem but did not know this one.

Window Seat

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Window Seat

You beat me to the window seat,
Silhouette of man against tall window with curtains.the secret poets’ nest;
you watched the broad and busy street,
a highway on your quest.

You beat me to the poets’ prize,
without a rhyme or form:
you saw the faces floating by
in the approaching storm,

you caught the litter and the leaves,
the puddles and the birds
and strung them as bizarre bright beads
on your vibrating verse.

Christina Egan © 2019

The poem has its origin in a coffee bar in a busy high street in London. It was published in the Tottenham Community Press (print issue of December 2018).

The elusive poet in a window seat. Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.

Osterglockenlied

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Bundle of daffodils in front of a wooden fence in bright sunlight.Osterglockenlied

Was soll ich jene jauchzenden Narzissen,
die sich in zartesten Zitronentönen
und vollem Apfelsinenleuchten dehnen,
die mehr als wir vom wahren Leben wissen,
mit meinen leisen Reimen nacherschaffen?
Um unauslöschlich nun sie zu entfachen:
in Flammen, die dem Blatt Papier entspringen
und Freude ringsherum zum Klingen bringen!

Christina Egan © 2015

 

Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.

Solstice Scroll

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Solstice Scroll

I break some rare and short-lived flowers,
I sacrifice some sunshine hours
for Melpomene’s altar steps.
Since Phaeton’s horses thunder higher
with ever more abundant fire,
I’ll finish ere the day-star sets.

I’ll call upon Apollo’s powers,
I’ll stand amongst the cypress towers
around my children’s hidden tomb.
I’ll write my elegy and sing it,
I’ll scroll it up, stand up and fling it
into the bright barge of the moon.

Christina Egan © 2018

Straight Roman road with ruins and trees to the left and right, in the dusk

Roman road in Carthage, Tunisia.
Photograph: Christina Egan © 2014

The Palms and the Poet

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Palms and the Poet

Short sturdy palm-trees, their leaves being blown to one side by a strong wind; blue sky, bright lawn.The palm-trees where the poet lingers
stretch out a thousand feathery fingers
and offer sweetest dates.
The shoulder-high ones’ shining tresses
give to the passing knight caresses,
the tall ones, sprinkled shades.

They weave their silken wings together
to shield him from the weighing weather
and point him to the wells.
He seems to smile, but does not notice
the leaves nor fruits, for in his throat is
a spring of syllables.

Christina Egan © 2005

Pond with weeping willow reflected and white goose crossing.

 

Huge Harp

The weeping willow
is smiling in the sunshine,
dancing in the wind.
You sit by the pond beneath,
as if inside a huge harp.

Christina Egan © 2017

The tanka’s image of the poet beside a large harp or lyre, as if he were sitting inside, was inspired by stained-glass windows or illuminated manuscripts showing King David performing the psalms he is said to have composed.

Photographs: Christina Egan © 2014 / © 2018.

Mondfische

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Mondfische
(Museum moderner Kunst)

Der weiße Dämmer:
von Regenbogenfängern
mit Blüten bestückt.

*

Bunte Mondfische…?
Wirklicher als Wirklichkeit
hier im Tagtraumteich.

*

Praller Löwenzahn,
tausendfach, singt der Sonne
aus voller Kehle!

Christina Egan © 2014

Very bright painting of mainly blue and red shapes on yellow.

Illustration: Max Ernst:  Fish fight. Oil on canvas, 1917.
© Max Ernst. Digital image distributed under FairUse at  WikiArt.

These poems were inspired by an exhibition of modernist art at the Max Ernst Museum Brühl. Germany. The bizarre and very colourful ‘moonfish’ make an appearance in the painting Mondfische (1917); I show a similar work here.

In a way, visual art is more real than reality. In Quest / Suche, I claim the same for music.

The Odd Word

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Odd Word

In this noise this dust this waste
of the traffic the toil
the relationships the part-time
part-heart commitments
the remorseless rap from the radio
the news of murder and treason the trash
worth millions of dollars the scraps
of subtle philosophy the divine
passionate percussion solos
something went missing
and the problem is
we don’t miss it.

In a café full of words and music
like lightning
somebody mentions Hölderlin
(a poet who went mad
after they had treated him
in a lunatic asylum)
and I remember his odd expression
‘the God’
odd isn’t it
‘the’
must be Classical Greek
I’ll clarify that.

Christina Egan © 1998

—

The phrase ‘words and music’ allude to 
a poetry event where I met my partner!
At a later reading, I presented this poem.