English Poems

My City Calls (Grey Roofs Grey Walls)

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

My City Calls

Grey roofs grey walls
Make up this place
A rough and kind
Familiar face

The spires chimneys
Market stalls
Suspended bridges
Station halls

Oh face of walls
So great so mild
My city calls
Come here my child

My city calls
With golden chime:
While winter falls
Stay here some time

The sky is full
Of rain and snow
Of miracles
To fall and grow

So many faces
In the street
Yet far away
The one I need

Far is my dear
So far away
But I am here
Just day to day

My city calls
Me with her charms
My heartbeat falls
into her arms

Christina Egan © 1995 / 2012

For a similar German poem, see Im Herzen von Köln. Like in Heimkehr nach Köln, the big city is seen as a mother. There are other poems or songs where I describe it as a person — man or woman, although I feel that a city is female. It is a personal relationship: my heart beats for the city, as I claim in Geflecht / Geflechte.

Acherons Mund

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Acherons Mund
(São Miguel, Azoren)

Das Inselreich spricht
in zitterndem Licht,
in zischenden Quellen,
in schwefligen Schwaden,
in schlaflosem Raunen
aus rissigem Grund
am Unterweltsschlund.

Vast surface of rough black rock to the left, gleaming pools of water and steam rising up to the right, mountains in the far background.Das Erdreich bestellt
am Rande der Welt
dem arglosen Wandrer
die Botschaft der Flammen,
die Mahnung der Schatten
aus Phlegetons und
aus Acherons Mund.

Christina Egan © 2016

Hot springs in Furnas, Sao Miguel Island, Azores.
Photograph by Henryk Kotowski via Wikimedia.

Acheron is the River of Pain and Phlegeton the River of Fire around Hades.

I believe that some Greeks or Phoenicians sailed to the Canary Islands and others may have reached the Azores; this might have influenced their mythology, describing the realms of the dead as a cave of shadows and as a blissful archipelago. More of the latter at Sonett der drei Seen!

You Want to Read This Poem

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

You Want to Read This Poem

You want to read this poem
time or no time
rhyme or no rhyme.

You want to know
that your face is a flame
in the hidden temple
of someone else’s heart
trembling and steady.

You want to dwell
on the deep-blue dusk
of her dress
of her eyes
of her soul.

You want to believe
one last time
that three hours are enough
to fuel three years of delight
and from there three thousand.

You want to be sure
she will never be too close
never too far
like surges of birdsong
like surf.

You want to read this poem
as if it were a prayer
as if it were a promise.

Christina Egan © 2011

You Do Not Want to Read this Poem

You do not want to read this poem
however much sunlight
however much midnight.

You do not want to plough
through luminous ciphers
of your own beauty
you want to hear it in someone’s voice
you want to see it on someone’s lips.

You want to lift your eyes from the paper
onto her face
you want to lift your hand from the paper
onto her arm
let it rest.

You want to step through this poem
as if it were a secret gate
to the tiered garden
of an ancient manor house
you heard of in a novel.

You do not want a host of poems
a pavement of paper
a quilt of hopes
you want a host of moments
a quilt of memories.

You do not want to read this poem
you want sudden life
before the sun has sunk.

Christina Egan © 2011

Red Balloon

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Red Balloon

In the crowd,
in the too early dark,
the enveloping damp, I rush,
crush onto the red bus, and there,
on the front bench, you are, as if waiting
for me, or at least hoping for me, with a smile,
a wide warm smile, just like the one you gave me
nineteen years ago, with the same smooth oval face;
and our words change the day into a string of pearls,
change the city into a cluster of colourful balloons;
in the damp dark evening, I feel the sun rising,
feel a breeze rising, taking my heart with it,
like a little red balloon, weightless,
into shadeless heights, we are
two bouncing balloons
on a red bus!
And
I love you
so
…
…
…
…
…

Christina Egan © 2016

Poem Red Balloon in the shape of a red balloon.

This poem was published in the
Tottenham Community Press,
No. 32, March 2020, p. 14.

There is also a wedding or
anniversary poem about a
Yellow Balloon !

On the Orange Bridge

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

On the Orange Bridge

I.

The bridge bears tiny trembling lives
across the wild and icy strait,
a miracle of miles.
So moves my life, suspended by
the scarce, but strong and sparkling, stakes
of kisses and of smiles.

Golden Gate Bridge from below, with waves lapping a rocky beach.

II.

If I could pray, my wishes might
arise like incense to the light
and cling to royal robes.
Yet I am weak; all I can give
is work and talk and love and live
on tangy glowing hopes.

Christina Egan © 2008

Golden Gate Bridge. Photograph by Christian Mehlführer.
‘Featured picture’ on Wikimedia Commons.

I wrote these lines just before I went to San Francisco. Coincidentally, I found it so cold there that I could not cross the bridge on foot even in September! Yet, it is gigantic and awe-inspiring, like many things in America, whether natural or man-made.

P.S.: I did get kissed on the bridge…! Thank you!

Berlin Zoo Station

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Berlin Zoo Station

I.

Blurred impression of large railway station through train window.Building sites, cordons,
corridors, concourses,
people whizzing, weaving,
people sauntering, skipping,
dragging luggage along, around,
trains shooting in and out,
shuttles on a loom.

Faces, faces like packs of cards,
shuffled, shuttled across the city,
voices, voices from all the winds,
into all the winds, and everyone
means something to someone,
everyone means something,
means everything.

 

II.

Cloud strips, golden and pink, above a dark crowded square at the very bottom.

Trains bridging borders,
the square, sun, people,
people, specks of colour
propelled past me,
their shades brushing me,
their warmth, breath,
so near, here, now.

Life, life, yes, yet
nothing but
the first faint dawn
of a future with no night,
no barriers, boundaries:
destination without distance,
one web of light.

Christina Egan © 2016 (I) / 1999 (II)

Photographs: Railway station and airport in Berlin. Christina Egan ©  2016.

The Lavender’s Splendours / dachterrasse

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Lavender’s Splendours

On brittle grey walls,
find brittle grey sheaves
on wire-thin stalks
with tired long leaves…

Lavender with fresh and wilted blossom, next to pale-golden grass.

The lavender’s splendours
of indigo spikes
are ashes and embers:
dull grey with mauve lights.

Yet grasp its pale grains
and grind them to flakes –
and dazzling white flames
will rise when it wakes!

Christina Egan © 2016

dachterrasse

dachterrasse
traumgehege

der straßenkreuzung den hinterhöfen
den baustellen enthobenShrub with bright-red berries on a roof-terrace, with deep-red ivy below.

lavendel und rosen
wuchern und welken

der feuerdorn verheißt
lautlose feuerwerke

Christina Egan © 2016

Photographs: Christina Egan © 2016

On Crossing the City

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

On Crossing the City

Sometimes you want to get out of your life
as if off a draughty and noisy bus
and wander along the pavement for miles
round corners, expecting a revelation.

People in books get off on occasion
to escape a track of modest despair,
but you cannot remember where they end up,
presumably just on another bus.

Sometimes you wonder if you caught the right bus
or at the right time, or the right way round,
and if this hectic clockwork of movements
is determined by destiny or by dice.

Christina Egan © 2011

Amongst high, dark, buildings, lawns, trees in blossom, and in the middle, a red doubledecker bus.

 

For a German poem about the quest for meaning and happiness amidst the apparent confusion of a big, busy, city, see my previous post Zugewogen.

 

Photograph: London bus. Christina Egan © 2016

psalm für dich / The Charm

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

psalm für dich

ein schwebender lebender planet
ist dein auge
ein schimmernder sternennebel
dein haar

manche menschen drehen sich nach dir um
und auch manche engel
Gott hat dich erfunden
um sich zu erfreuen

Christina Egan © 2012

This poem has just been published in the Münsterschwarzacher Bildkalender 2017.

The person described may be someone the speaker is in love with or someone else, like a young child. Ultimately, it could be each one of us. I imagine that God feels as passionately about each human being as we feel only about very few others… and of course, still never as passionately.

The Charm

I want to rest my stormy eyes
in yours to find a moment’s calm;
I want to rest my wounded hands
in yours to find their strongest balm.

I need to lay my heart by yours,
which cast this fast and forceful charm,
I need to hear your heart tune in
to sing a brief and burning psalm.

Christina Egan © 2003

Ein Muster aus Muscheln / Greek Islands

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Ein Muster aus Muscheln

Ein Muster aus Muscheln und Bernstein und Bein,
mit Karneol und Koralle durchsetzt,
auf lapislazuliblauem Grund:
So leuchten die Inseln im Sonnenschein,
vor dreitausend Jahren… und letzthin… und jetzt:
ein Mosaik, ein vollendeter Fund.

Vors Fenster des sinkenden Flugzeugs gespannt,
vom Guckloch des finsteren Turmes gerahmt
– nur einen Moment – nur einen Moment –
das Muster aufs wartende Auge gebannt,
die Farben ins wache Gedächtnis gemalt:
ein Bild, das nach dreißig Jahren noch brennt.

Christina Egan © 2016

Standard_of_Ur_BM_121201

Standard of Ur (2500 BC). – Photograph: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

I am showing this ancient object – twice as old as our classical antiquity – because it must have inspired my poem about Greece. The images on the box are made of shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone, but I did not remember those details or  even think of the thing. When you have the chance to go to London, do not miss out on the Sumerian galleries of the British Museum!

The longing for a return to Greece, both for the Mediterranean environment and for the ancient civilisation, is also expressed in On Eating Olives / Beim Olivenessen  and in Greek Islands  (below). There are a number of poems about Crete in German and English on this website.

Greek Islands

There is more blue in the air
between here and the horizon,
between morning and evening,
than the cup of the eye can hold.

So my soul may flow over
into the sky,
into the sea,
into this scattered paradise…

Christina Egan © 2012 

On the topic of the blue Mediterranean Sea, see also Meine blaue Mauer  and O Heimatland aus Stein und Licht. On the manifold colours of the same sea, see The Purple Sea / Das lila Meer.