Mild Christmas Eve
My heavy gate to heaven
has got a secret crack,
and sometimes sunlike flashes
steal through the sudden gap.
There are no stars this Christmas
but those in your sweet face,
no snow and sparkling crystals
but those in your embrace.
You are my splendid banquet,
you are the birth of mirth,
you’ll be my earth in heaven –
my heaven here on earth.
Christina Egan © 2004
Photograph by Gabriel Pollard [CC BY-SA 2.5].
Featured picture on Wikimedia Commons.
Kerzenbekrönt
Senkt sich die Dämmrung an frostigen Tagen
– früher denn jemals, doch zauberhaft blau –
hängt über stolzen gewölbten Mansarden,
hält über giebelgeschmückten Fassaden,
bannt aus dem Geiste das leidige Grau.
Stürzen Gestirne herab in Kaskaden
– feucht ist das Pflaster, doch goldengetönt –
spannen sich Perlen an Faden um Faden
blinkend und bebend von Laden zu Laden
bis an die Kirchtürme, kerzenbekrönt.
Christina Egan © 2016
This poem was inspired by a front page photograph of the superb newspaper Agora in Fulda, Germany, which I had folded over. Then I noticed that beneath the idyllic historical street lit up for Christmas, an industrial container had been inserted through photo montage: as a makeshift home for a refugee family. I felt I had to write a second poem, which you can find at Farbechte Hoffnung.
The street shown is Friedrichstraße, which gives you quite a good impression of past centuries, despite severe damage during the Second World War and ensuing changes. Fulda is quite good for midwinter holidays because of the Christmas Market, the nativity scenes in the churches, numerous festive events… and the snow in the mountains.
When the Snow Falls
When the snow falls,
when the snow calls
with its crystal-clear voice,
when the streets hum,
when the streets drum
with their boisterous noise,
when the fog shifts,
when the fog lifts
and the sun gilds the stone –
let your smile grow,
for a while know
you are never alone
Christina Egan © 2019
Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.
This poem was commissioned for a Christmas card by a university library.
Feel free to write or print it in your cards, as long as acknowledge me as the author somewhere.
La table jaune
La table jaune limpide,
couleur de tournesol,
m’invite dans l’oasis
au cœur des plaines arides,
parmi palmiers et roses
en fleur sans fin, sans pause :
il met l’esprit au vol
vers les sommets saphir,
vers le soleil couchant,
mais fort même au nadir…
La table tournesol
est un tapis volant !
Mais il me manque le mot
qui le transforme, le pose
carrément aux epaules
des vents comme un radeau…
Ô table jaune et rouge,
écoute-moi et bouge,
transporte-moi aux flots
de l’air vers l’horizon !
Christina Egan © 2016
The yellow table in the oasis becomes a flying carpet: it lifts the mind up towards the high mountains. Yet, to lift the body up also, it requires a password, and we do not have it!
The rose garden is set in a country where the sun is strong even towards evening or in midwinter, and where roses are always in blossom in abundance: I found it in Morocco.
Photograph: Roadside café in Morocco in midwinter. Christina Egan © 2012.
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
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.
Die letzte Stunde dieses Jahres
Die letzte Stunde dieses Jahres ,
ein runder Spiegel, wendet sich.
Der volle Mond, ein endlich klares
Signal, ganz hoch, verschwendet sich.
Ein glitzerndes, unabsehbares
Feuerwerkstanzen blendet dich,–
und etwas Wahres, Wunderbares
aus alter Zeit vollendet sich.
Christina Egan © 2017
Some Prayers are Like Lightning
Some prayers are like lightning
and others are like dawn,
some prayers are like sunset
and some perhaps like noon.
And saints and angels lift them
across the heavens’ dome
and lay them on the carpet
below the flaming throne.
And God will weigh and sift them
and send his answers down –
some veiled and some diverted,
some sooner, though, than soon.
Christina Egan © 2017
Photograph by Gabriel Pollard
[CC BY-SA 2.5]. Featured picture
on Wikimedia Commons.
Schlaflied
(Spätherbst)
Blätter fallen,
Regen fällt,
langsam schlafen
geht die Welt.
Schlaf’ auch du nun,
Mutter wacht.
Gute Ruhe,
gute Nacht.
Nebel wallen
und verwehn,
Schnee wird fallen,
Stern wird stehn.
Schlaf’ auch du nun,
Engel wacht.
Gute Träume,
gute Nacht.
(Für Johannes)
Christina Egan © 2009
Die Riesenschaukel
Papa, Jakob, Julian
stoßen ihre Schaukel an,
Schaukel mit dem Riesenkorb
trägt sie von der Erde fort.
Sie schaukeln und schwingen,
sie jauchzen und singen,
hinauf, hinauf, hurra!
Mama, Jakob, Julian
stoßen ihre Schaukel an,
fliegen übern feinen Sand,
fliegen übern Waldesrand.
Sie steigen und sinken,
sie lachen und winken,
hinauf, hinauf, hurra!
(Für Julian und Jakob)
Christina Egan © 2009
You can of course substitute your own names in this song, for instance ‘Vati, Klaus und Peter nun’ or ‘Mutti und Elisabeth’. Perhaps you can find tunes, too!
Wandel
Wo ist der hohle Baum
im Kreise der steinernen Bänke,
der mit knochigen Fingern
die Netze des Nebels,
mit knorrigen Zehen
das feuchte Gras durchfischte?
Alles ist quellendes Blatt nun
und berstendes Bunt,
Laubzauber, lautloses Lachen,
tiefer Atem langer Tage
zwischen bergendem Grund
und goldenem Wind.
Christina Egan © 2006
Schloßpark Fulda im Frühling.
Photograph: Christina Egan © 2014.
Zauberspruch zur Winterverbrennung
Lohende Flammen, lohende Glut,
schmelzet den Schnee uns, schmelzet den Frost!
Knisternde Äste, knisterndes Holz,
brechet den Bann uns, brechet das Eis!
Christina Egan © 2016
These lines were inspired by two things: the German custom of gathering round huge bonfires to drive the winter out; and those few pagan spells in ancient German which have come down to us.
The sound of the hissing flames and the crackling branches is captured in the verse. The power of winter is interpreted as a spell, an ordeal of darkness and cold, which this spell, the chant or prayer of man, can break.
The only pagan spells in Old High German, probably written down in Fulda monastery in the 9th or 10th century AD. – Photograph: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Christina Egan 