The Forest on Fire
The forest on fire, filling the screen,
catches your eye, the living torches
of the towering pines, the sore soles
of the koalas, the bent skeletons
of the verandas. You notice at last
the whale on your doorstep,
led astray, stranded, gasping, or
the regal white bird, its wide wings
spread out on your beach, already
choked on your civilisation. Where
is the lark? Half your precious planet
is about to be razed. Face it.
When you rush out now to fight
the fire, the flood, and the festering waste,
do you not know it is too late
for you, yourself? The biting fumes
are invisibly running in the rivers
of your blood, the glittering garbage
is secretly heaped in the caves
of your bones, the drugs and counter-drugs
skip around in your brain. Doomed
you confess to be? You are due,
overdue. Half your precious life
has already been cancelled. It’s gone.
Christina Egan ©2021
x Death
The Komodo Dragons
The Komodo Dragons
The roots of the forest are trembling,
the branches are frosted with fear.
The jeeps and the tanks are assembling.
The komodo dragons are near.
Their skin’s like the ice on the river,
they graze and they raze all that breathes.
The roofs of the cottages shiver.
The earth has gone silent. She grieves.
The earth has lost too many children
before the full moon could return.
The komodo dragons are grinning.
The roofs of the cottages burn.
The stable aflame and the steeple –
the ice on the river now thaws.
This is not the war of the people.
This is the triumph of the jaws.
Christina Egan ©2022
This poem was published (as The Comodo Dragons) in the Haringey Community Press (circulation 15,000) in May 2022.
Komodo dragons got their name because they appear to be mythical creatures, but are real animals, huge lizards which can devour their prey almost without trace.
Two years ago today, the Ukraine was brutally attacked by the military machinery of another country.
When we fear with and grieve with the Ukraine, there are always echos of the Second World War, the First World War, and other wars. My verse is influenced by the famous sonnet Andreas Gryphius wrote in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, Thrähnen des Vaterlandes / Anno 1636 (Tears of the Fatherland).
Nachruf auf einen Gärtner
Nachruf auf einen Gärtner
Abertausend goldne Nüsse
trug der weite Walnussbaum,
warf sie kraftvoll und gelassen
an den Schuppen, an den Zaun.
Abertausend süße Bissen
brachte er aus sich hervor,
zu bescheiden, um zu wissen,
was die Welt an ihm verlor.
Christina Egan ©2020
This poem was written for my uncle, who was a professional and passionate gardener.
It is published in the calendar, Münsterschwarzacher Bildkalender 2024 (circulation 80,000) with the photo above.
Tabucchis Blau
Tabucchis Blau
hochsommerhimmel
über Lissabons hügeln
so blau daß es beinahe beißt
so schön daß es beinahe schmerzt
und vor der gleißenden steilen
vielfach verschachtelten stadt
ruft mit demselben trunknen blau
die bucht dir unbeirrbar zu:
du stehst immer am anfang
einer entdeckungsfahrt!
Christina Egan © 2012
„con… il sole che splendeva, e con una città che scintillava, letteralmente scintillava sotto la sua finestra, e un azzurro, un azzurro mai visto, sostiene Pereira, di un nitore che quasi feriva gli occhi…”
Antonio Tabucchi, Sostiene Pereira
Antonio Tabucchi (1943-2012) loved Lisbon and lived there. I wrote this poem for him when he died: his last voyage would be the one to another, even more beautiful world. The last line can, however, be interpreted in many other ways.
Illustration: “Elba — Land der Esel” by Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz (1955). With kind permission of Galerie Klaus Spermann.
Coal Tits / Leaf Surf
Coal Tits
Coal tits are weaving through the leaves,
leaves tinged with gold and tinged with rust;
the earth, relieved of darkness, breathes
before the leaves will turn to dust.
Coal tits are chirping in the leaves,
wings tinged with fire, tinged with ashes;
their song is weaving with the breeze
through our windows’ rigid meshes…
Christina Egan © 2017
Leaf Surf
The lawn lies like an emerald bay,
like golden sand the fallen leaves.
The wind is waltzing on the roofs,
the wind is leaping through the streets,
it rolls into the shimmering heaps,
it stirs them up, it whirls them up,
it sweeps a wilful whispering surf
onto the sun-bathed autumn turf!
The earth takes one last joyful breath
before the shade falls like a spell.
That there is so much death in life
and so much dancing life in death…
Christina Egan © 2017
Photograph by makamuki0 (Marc Pascual).
Der Graben
Der Graben
Meine Kraft sinkt wie der Sand
durch das Sieb der Müdigkeit…
Zum Zerbrechen angespannt
schwankt mein langgeschwächter Leib.
Her springt niemand, denn ich zwinge
knapp mich von des Grabens Rand,
eh’ er meinen Schritt verschlinge,–
meine Not bleibt unbekannt.
Unbenannt bleibt meine Fehde
mit dem trüben Grabeshauch:
Die Gesellschaft scheut die Rede
von des Giftes stummem Lauf.
Auch mein Mut sinkt wie der Sand
durch das Sieb der Müdigkeit…
Schreite ich durchs Schattenland
ungelebter Lebenszeit.
Christina Egan © 2018
This elegy could be about drugs or
medical drugs – or toxic substances
in the environment.
I hold that with all our ‘progress’, we
are gradually poisoning ourselves:
a cruel collective suicide.
The End of Lent
Sext
(Midday prayer)
Amidst a day of darkness,
amidst a life of fight,
the pillars and the organ
build up a vault of light.
Somebody must be present
to hear the silent screams!
There’s help past understanding,
there’s hope beyond all dreams.
But where do you keep hiding?
O Lord, who has left whom?
Dispense a drop of mercy
on each of us this noon.
Christina Egan © 1998
The End of Lent
There’s more to life behind the troubled scene,
more light than mighty, timeless words can mean:
there is a truth that never lies,
a truth that fills the earth
with fragrant breath.
There’s more than we can fathom and esteem,
or ask for, seek for, need, desire, dream:
there is a love that never dies,
a love that will give birth
in very death.
Christina Egan © 1999
Curling Up
Curling Up
I’m curling up
against the cold
against the world
its random roar
its lazy contempt
its glacial loneliness
I’m curling up
with the sky in my mind
and the sun in my heart
around a seed
already unfurling
and then: uncurling
Christina Egan © 2014
I am at Home in the Darkness
I.
I am at home in the darkness.
At least, dreams shine more brightly here,
lanterns among phantoms,
gold grains in the drifting sand.
Only my dreams
are real,
are true.
II.
All those who wish to die
crave for life, life, lost
in this cavern of wandering shades,
crazed by the thirst for a garden.
Only those who wish to die
are aware,
are alive.
Christina Egan © 2014
Photographs: Christina Egan © 2014 / 2016.
I assume that very, very often when someone feels they want to die or are about to die, they are simply physically unwell — or simply overtired — or simply literally in the dark. If this insight informed our science and our society, we could manage our lives so much better.
The date these three poems were written is significant: it was mid-February, which is when I (like everyone in the northern hemisphere) feels the dark and cold most bitterly, because halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox, the various reserves of our bodies are dangerously low. From late February on, things get better, and this is not a mental phenomenon (little flowers can, after all, not cure leaden fatigue) but a physical fact.
am kalten kamin / Winter Sunset
am kalten kamin
die eingerahmten flammen
von süßer sonnenkraft
sinken in sich zusammen
in kalter mitternacht
das feuer das dich blendet
in wildem geisterglanz
hat sich zuletzt verschwendet
zu tode sich getanzt
eh noch der morgen graute
liegt ausgelaugt der herd
und über deinem haupte
hängt sichtbar nun das schwert
Christina Egan © 2017
Winter Sunset
If only I could fly
across the icy sky
into the dying sun,
so all my tears,
my wants and fears
and wanderings would be none.
If only I could fall
into the fiery ball
and warm and melt away,
and then be shot,
a sparkling dot,
into a new-born day.
Christina Egan © 2003
Image: No title. René Halkett (1938). Image with kind permission of Galerie Klaus Spermann.
This is the End (Yet all will be well)
This is the End
Most days are too harsh, and most days are too dark,
and most hours are trundling along through a void,
while the moons fade away, barely leaving a ray,
and proud cities, piled up to the clouds, are destroyed.
Yet all will be well, yes, it yet will be well,
and all manner of things will be well in the end,
when in fathomless bliss like a fathomless kiss
all the stars, all the spirits will brighten and blend.
Christina Egan © 2004
Lines five and six are a quote from Sister Julian of Norwich,
an English hermit and mystic who lived six hundred years ago.
In Advent, which this year starts today, Christians also think of
the inevitable and terrifying end of the world.
The Tower of Jericho, around 9,000 years old. Photograph:
Reinhard Dietrich (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons.
Christina Egan 