I did not read the book I took I did not cast a glance not once I took the bus and dreamt no end I wrote some verse of love and stuff I dreamt that in the street we’d meet and summer would return and burn and that would be the date from fate: the sun and you and me all three
This playful verse from a London double-decker bus was actually written in mid-August, when it should be bright and hot everywhere; yet the weather has always been unpredictable and is now turning seriously unstable. In this poem, the summer is not returning after the period of winter but after a long, dull, cool break between early and late heatwaves.
Du bist die Hand, die mein Gebetbuch hält in aller Frühe, wenn die laute Welt noch schlummert wie ein müdgetobtes Kind und wir die Stimme ihrer Träume sind. Wir sind der Psalm, der aus der Erde steigt, wenn Nachtwind noch die Wiesenblumen neigt, das erste Wechsellied im Weizenfeld… Du bist die Hand, die mein Gebetbuch hält.
At dawn, the noisy and unruly world, just like a tired child, has not yet stirred. We are the voice of all its dreams: we stand, my hymnal lifted by your distant hand. We are the psalm arising from the earth while night wind is still bending blooming herbs. We are the chant across the ripening land… My hymnal lifted by your distant hand.
These lines describe the early-morning prayer of Christian monks and nuns: standing up and bowing, chanting and responding to each other… They also imagine an invisible connection between two of them — good friends perhaps, close relatives, or former lovers — who feel that they are praying together across the distance between them.
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.
Word cloud of the poem Sudden Summer (colours edited but randomly allocated).
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.
Raindrops on window, with flowers showing in each drop. Photograph by Kumiko Shimizu on Unsplash.
One Drop of Rain
If one still drop of rain contains a rose and if my eye encompasses your face, a secret crystal must exist that holds the sparkling galaxy in one round space.
Im Dämmer schwebt der neugeborne Mond, ein unhörbares Gutenachtgeläute. Die Amsel, die auf der Antenne thront, ruft sternenklar… Mein Herz zerspringt vor Freude.
II.
Pflücken
Und immer wieder Amsel, Mond und Rose, und immer wieder Wehmut und Entzücken… Und unterm Abendstern das grenzenlose Verlangen, diesen Augenblick zu pflücken.
III.
Xylophon
Ich brauche nichts als diese Vorstadtstraße, den Blattgoldhimmel und den Vogelruf,– und dann das klare Xylophon der Sprache, die Hunderte verklärter Verse schuf.
Noch ist nicht aller Tage Abend, der Sommer noch nicht ausgebrannt, noch will die Feige Frucht dir tragen, entfaltet sich dir ohne Fragen die Erde ohne Riß und Rand.
Noch ist nicht aller Nächte Morgen, noch paßt der Mond in deine Hand! Noch ziehen Störche gegen Norden, noch will der Wildbach überborden… Noch harrt die Perle dir im Sand.
So you thought life was past? It has only begun. For whatever you’ve lost there is something you’ve won. For whatever you’ve missed there is something you’ve learned. It is harvest: persist and reap all that you earned.
This is the word cloud (not of the tags but of the texts) of all English poems posted on this site in the past year. Another year of love and life and leaves… and of mass consumption, mass media, and mass murder.
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.
Christina Egan 