English Poems

Friday in Lent

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Friday in Lent

Friday morning.
The city is busy and tired
under the closely curtained sky.

The headlines shout out:
Things fall apart,
trains, towns,
countries, couples.

Life hurts.

The day is a prison, a lenient one,
with gardens and books as windows
and magical messages beamed onto screens,
with the freedom of speech
and the purple pursuit of the heavens.

Christina Egan © 2001

Purple is the colour of Lent, representing suffering; you will find churches decorated —and their statues covered up — with purple fabrics. Purple (violet, lilac, mauve) is a slightly melancholy colour, but it also has dreamlike and spiritual qualities. My ‘purple pursuit’ has all these shades of meaning; ‘the heavens’ could refer to religious faith or simply to a decent and fulfilled life on earth, as in ‘Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’.

Friday is the time when Christians remember Jesus’ passion and keep some fasting, a miniature Lent within each week… or at least the time when they do remember their faith during Lent. The positive messages on your screen could come from a friend — or from God, if you believe in Scriptures!

For a German and English poem about Lent, go to Fastenzeit / Lent.

I Peel Potatoes Round and Round

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

I Peel Potatoes Round and Round

The pots and pans are stacked away
The fruit and flour packed away
The spoons and ladles tied away
And half my life is lied away

I peel potatoes round and round
And see the muddy peelings mount
I peel and chop and boil and feel
My lifetime passing with the peel

The dust and crumbs are sucked away
The sheets and covers tucked away
The mud and mildew brushed away
And half my life is washed away

I am a woman and a wife
And all of you deny my life
Cast speeches of equality
And stifling silence over me

The socks and shirts are stacked away
The boots and woollens packed away
The shears and shovels tied away
And half my life is lied away

I am a woman and a wife
And all of you deny my strife
Is this two thousand seventeen?
My shackles hurt me more unseen

Christina Egan © 2016

Line of washing outdoors, very colourful, above greenery and flower-pot.

Photograph: Christina Egan © 2013.

Pretended liberation of women = Double shifts for women = New servitude of women

Read more in the essay  The Tea Turned Cold in the Cup  at FEMINISM.

 

Le tesson / The Shard

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Le tesson

En février givré, je fouille
les feuilles mortes pour des fleurs
modestes et fortes et courageuses :
soldats contre la froideur

ou des pierres précieuses
éparpillées en bas, fragments
pâlis de la Cité Céleste
que quelques éblouis attestent.

Parfois, une sphère lumineuse
me frappe, vive mais tranquille :
plutôt que le premier bouton
ton œil est le tesson qui brille.

Christina Egan © 2017

A pair of mauve crocusses, wide open, in bright sunlight, with honey-bee hovering above.

The Shard

In frosty February, I scour
decaying leaves for the first flower:
some modest soldiers, strong and bold
against the kingdom of the cold,

or precious stones on muddy ground,
some faded fragments of the round
of Heavenly Jerusalem,
that dazzling more-than-real realm.

At times a circle full of light,
as calm as lively, strikes my sight:
but rather than spring’s early guard
your eye is the resplendent shard.

Christina Egan © 2017

For a German and English parallel poem about the first spring flowers, go to my previous post, King Spring / König Frühjahr.

Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.
Crocusses with honey-bee, captured in London in mid-February!

King Spring / König Frühjahr

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

King Spring

The highway under my window is suddenly flooded with sun.
I see a strange person passing – his face is greenish and long,
his hat is purple and pointed – and followers thronging, hatless.
Is it a pharaoh? A druid? A dancer in fancy-dress?
I’ve spotted a spearhead of petals, magenta pushed up into blue,
the first magnolia flower: King Spring and his retinue!

Christina Egan © 2016

Large long buds above a road, with one opening in bright magenta, the folded petals looking like a hight hat.

König Frühjahr

Die Landstraße unter dem Fenster liegt plötzlich im Sonnenlicht.
Da geht ein fremder Geselle mit grünlichem langem Gesicht
und purpurner spitzer Mütze; Barhäuptige folgen ihm.
Ein Pharaoh? Heidenpriester? Ein Tänzer im Narrenkostüm?
Es ist eine Lanzenspitze, rosenrot hochgereckt,
die erste Magnolienblüte: Ich hab’ König Frühjahr entdeckt!

Christina Egan © 2016

Photograph:  Magnolia buds (England, February). Christina Egan © 2016.

Fewer Things!

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Fewer Things!

We need to churn out fewer words,
we need to burn out fewer lamps,
we need to fashion fewer things,Roman_bowl_01_MusLon
but those, of perfect elegance:

a shallow bowl with turned-out rim,
just like a pale and slender hand;
a silver ring with single stone,
as if the sky and moon descend. 

Christina Egan © 2013

Jar, elegantly curved, with brown and blue glaze.

 

Roman bowl. Photograph from the
website of the Museum of London.

See also my musings on the little
Mesopotamian jar, Glazed Clay.

Assyrian jar, glazed pottery. Photograph:
© The Trustees of the British Museum.

Get Up and Follow Me

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Get Up and Follow Me

Love sometimes does  pass our little lives
and stops and speaks: Get up and follow me.
We look, look up, into each other’s eyes,
get up, leave all and follow hand in hand.
There is a love that’s larger than the sun,
it knows the shade, the night, it knows no end,
it’s definite and infinite, it flows
through our hearts, till two are truly one.

Christina Egan © 2000

These lines were inspired by the biblical stories of Jesus calling his followers, who literally got up, left everything behind and — followed him. Just imagine you are getting up from your desk this minute to walk out of your life!

I wrote this poem for my own wedding and recommend it also for anniversaries; a long time together is not eternity yet, but a great achievement and a great gift. Perhaps you could even use it for Valentine’s Day.

Venus and Mars

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Venus and Mars

The darker the night,
the stronger the stars,
the fiercer the fight
of Venus and Mars.

They fight not each other
but darkness and cold,
they each hold a banner
embroidered with gold.

The later the hour,
the likelier dawn,
with fire and flower
in splendour reborn!

Christina Egan © 2016

This poem takes up my thoughts about the elements in the previous post: here, the male and female principles are involved in a common struggle rather than a struggle against each other.

‘Dawn’ refers to the dawn of the new year in early spring as much as to the time of the day; and springtime is even more unpredictable than daylight, precisely in a northern country.

The Spirits of Nimrod

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Spirits of Nimrod

The Spirits of Nimrod
stood tall and stood fast
to guard empty castles
of empires past.

The spirits of marble
were shaken at last:
their wings broken off,
their beards ground to dust.

The proud heads of Nimrod
are curls without face,
their eloquent pedestals
frames without phrase.

Yet some still have lips
to whisper by dusk
and some stir their wings
deep under the mud.

The Spirits of Nimrod
will rise like the sun,
invincible eagles:
beware when they come!

Christina Egan © 2016

Ruins with many columns in arid, hilly land.

Invaluable buildings and sculptures of great antiquity and beauty have recently been destroyed by Daesh (so-called Islamic State). Nimrod was one place affected by those war crimes and Palmyra another.

These lines evoke the return of the gods — not as pagan deities but as statues: as witnesses of history and works of art, which we worship in our own way and will reconstruct, recreate, document, or remember.

Photograph: Diocletian’s camp in Palmyra, Syria (2010). By Bernard Gagnon (Own work) [GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

Paths from the Past

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Paths from the Past

Flagstone on flagstone,
the pavement unrolls
beneath my eyes,
my resolute feet.

My steps seem to follow
irresistible tracks,
invisible traces,
uncharted faultlines.

Memory maybe
from before my birth?
Destiny maybe
beyond my death?

Flagstone on flagstone,
the story unfolds
beneath my breath,
my dexterous fingers.

Christina Egan © 2015

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

I begin the year with a Roman road for the third time round!

I do not speak of natural or magical force fields but of manmade structures; however, these are imbued with destiny, in that people were meant to build them, move along them, or return to them… perhaps even after thousands of years.

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