Magical Chimes

Magical Chimes

A silver box with coral lid,
the wintry summer palace glows
atop the steep and even hill.

The pleasure ponds are frozen still;
a thousand windows in neat rows
blink one by one and drink their fill.

A haze hangs in the copse of firs
and birdsong floats, a silver web…
Among the shades, a buzzard stirs.

The clockface on the tower shows
ten in the morning; then it throws
its golden chimes into the wind

like golden coins! The treasure rolls
across the grounds, down to the walls,
across the fields, down to the mill,

where in the yard, a cockerel crows –
as if the land were now awake,
as if today the ice might break.

Christina Egan ©2017


This poem was inspired by walks through the grounds of 18th century palace Schloss Fasanerie, (Eichenzell near Fulda, Germany), which are freely accessible to the public.

One of my best German poems, Aprilabend (Der Tag ist hoch), describes the view across the highlands from there.

You will find another clock tower at Himmelblaue Uhr (Tottenham)  and May Haiku (Bruce Castle); the latter post is in English.

Tree Haiku (Bloomsbury)

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.

Radiance (You did not see the star)

Frühlingsanfangsvorfreude

Frühlingsanfangsvorfreude

Das Spiel des Lichtes und das Spiel der Winde
auf goldnem Haar und goldnem Mauermoos,
die Käferlandschaft rauher brauner Rinde
und große Schmetterlinge, schwerelos…

Hundertmal dieselbe Runde drehen,
wenn zuletzt die Lebenskraft verfällt,–
aber nie hat man sich sattgesehen,
nie am Erdkreis noch am Himmelszelt!

Blaue Gaukeleien: Himmelssplitter!
Feuerfarbne Falter: Funkenflug!
Vogelchor, Geläute und Gewitter,–
niemals trinken Aug und Ohr genug.

Christina Egan ©2023

The title means “Looking forward at the beginning of spring” in one word: “spring-beginning-forward-joy”! A poem about old age, full of hope and zest. It was written on spring equinox, after a walk round the block with a very aged person. Poignantly, soon after, the person grew too weak for walks.

A Speck in the Dark

A Speck in the Dark

Grey buildings, grey branches,
black streets in the rain…
Dark coats and pale faces,
white sky yet again.

Drained off is the rainbow:
there’s shade and there’s rust.
Smudged world in the window,
and noon feels like dusk.

There: sunrise is flashing,
an orange-red spark,
with sky-blue unfolding –
a speck in the dark!

Western bluebird, Washington State. Photograph: Vickie J Anderson. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The bluebird’s alighting
on quivering twigs;
the buds were awaiting
a signal like this!

The bluebird is glowing,
alive and alert,
and colours are brewing
in heaven and earth.

Christina Egan ©2018

Der Nebel hebt sich

Der Nebel hebt sich

(Schloß Fasanerie bei Fulda)

Der Nebel hebt sich,
und der Rauhreif auf den Weiden,
feine Spitze, glitzert auf.

Aus dichten Fichtenschirmen sprühn
kapellenglockenhelle
Stimmen ohne Zahl.

Ein Vöglein folgt, dort oben, sieh,
mit dunklen Flügeln, gelber Brust,
ein Sonnenstrahl!

Ein niedrer Wolkenstreif muß weichen,
und der bleiche Mond, des Dunkels Geist,
desgleichen.

Der ausgelaugte Himmel blaut,
der federnd-feste Boden taut,
gurgelt und gärt…

Noch wehrt der Winter sich,–
bezwungen ist er schon.
Die Erde atmet wieder tiefer…

Und wer nur auf den Hügel steigt
und schaut und hört und spürt,
kriegt neue Kraft und Lust!

Christina Egan © 2017

A new poetic form: three lines in each stanza, with irregular lenght and irregular rhymes — but each stanza having ten stressed syllables, with one unstressed syllable in between, making the flow of the language regular, natural and musical at the same time!

The poem was written on February 14th. The Rhön mountains have a harsh climate with long winters characterised by cold and snow and fog. All the more is spring welcome, even the early signs of it…

Blue Cloud

Blue Cloud

Framed by the rubber
of the rolling windows,
the shifting squares
of terraced houses,

the sliding panels
of allotment fences
it appears
again:

a bolt of blue,
the sky in a cloud,
an armful of May –
my cyanothus!

And masked and
unfolding again
and past and
afloat in my eyes…

Christina Egan © 2008

Little tree with bright-blue blossom, next to pink and blue flowers.A tiny light-blue Cyanothus. The one in the poem was a massive tree with almost indigo flowers. I never cease to marvel at the blue blossom. See also Under the Blue Bloom of the Tree.

Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.

im angesicht der sonne

im angesicht der sonne

im angesicht der sonne
steht aufrecht
und einsam
die erste osterglocke

auferstanden
aus der schweren schwarzen erde
freudestrahlend
daß es endlich lichter werde

winterwendend
düftespendend
sich verschwendend
sonnengleich

Christina Egan © 2019

Für Sr. Petra de Resurgente

Huge liturgical book with very large writing and music, richly illuminatedServices for Easter morning: “Sunday of the Resurrection”.
Photograph: by ignis [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Purple Dusk (Bankside, London)

Nocturne in Purple and Grey
(Bankside, London)

Hemmed with the sequins of lamps
the silver carpet of the river,
the lilac scarves of the bridges, the buildings.

People are blown about like brown leaves.
A few boats float, dozing,
awaiting brighter days.

The hues of lily and lavender
rise, for a moment, and blend,
with a pale memory of their scents.

Great and grey, the river strides past,
great and grey, the moment slides past,
like a graceful line of wild geese.

Christina Egan © 2005

River scene in dreamy bluish hues: gigantic bridge pillar, man on small boat, city on shore.

 

An early-spring impression in pale lilac and silvery grey. Bankside is the southern shore of the Thames in London.

Many years after I wrote those lines, I noticed the similarity with Turner’s mesmerising Nocturnes and renamed the text!

For a German poem depicting purple dusk see ostseeschlaflied (Darß).

 

Nocturne in Blue and Gold. Oil painting by J. A. M. Whistler, showing Battersea Bridge in London, ca. 1872-1875. Tate Gallery, London.