English Poems

Grün und gülden / Green and Golden

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment
Ancient metal disk, deep green, showing golden celestial bodies.

Grün und gülden

Auf der weiten Erdenscheibe
kauert meine kleine Bleibe
still in pfauenblauer Nacht;
und aus ungeheurer Ferne
steigen unzählbare Sterne
wie von Zauberhand entfacht.

Auf den unsichtbaren Gleisen
durch den Weltraum aber kreisen
zwei Gestirne um mein Dach:
Glück muß mir das güldne schreiben,
doch das grüne bringt mir Leiden,–
zwei verflochten tausendfach.

Christina Egan ©2017

Moon with many craters, brownish and brightly lit.

Green and Golden

On the vast orb of the earth
clings my cottage to the turf,
hushed in night of peacock-blue;
from unfathomably far
still emerges star on star,
magically lit anew.

See, on secret tracks in space
two celestial bodies trace
orbits round my own abode:
golden star and green must bring
happiness and suffering –
interwoven thousandfold.

Christina Egan ©2023

For more musings on destiny, see the previous post, Zugefallen. There are sparkling stars in Zugefallen and flickering candles in the poem Zugewogen. Destiny is written in the stars, or rather, in the Heavens.

Nebra sky disk (Himmelsscheibe von Nebra), ca. 4000 years old. Photograph: JoKaliauer via Wikimedia Commons. Copyright: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Callisto, moon of Jupiter. Photograph taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in 2001. NASA/JPL/DLR(German Aerospace Center), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

A New Poem is Being Born

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment


A New Poem is Being Born

There is an empty space on greyish paper:
to fill with fire from a rocky scar
and with fresh ashes on a ghostly glacier,
to fix a brilliant moon and matching star.

Christina Egan ©2024

Ein neues Gedicht wird geboren

Die graue Leere des Papiers erfüllt
das Feuer, das aus Felsennarbe quilt,
der Aschenfall auf geisterhaftem Firn,
der Mond mit funkelndem Begleitgestirn.

Christina Egan ©2024

The Komodo Dragons

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Komodo Dragons

The roots of the forest are trembling,
the branches are frosted with fear.
The jeeps and the tanks are assembling.
The komodo dragons are near.

Their skin’s like the ice on the river,
they graze and they raze all that breathes.
The roofs of the cottages shiver.
The earth has gone silent. She grieves.

The earth has lost too many children
before the full moon could return.
The komodo dragons are grinning.
The roofs of the cottages burn.

The stable aflame and the steeple –
the ice on the river now thaws.
This is not the war of the people.
This is the triumph of the jaws.

Christina Egan ©2022

This poem was published (as The Comodo Dragons) in the Haringey Community Press (circulation 15,000) in May 2022.

Photograph: Dezidor, CC-BY-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Komodo dragons got their name because they appear to be mythical creatures, but are real animals, huge lizards which can devour their prey almost without trace.

Two years ago today, the Ukraine was brutally attacked by the military machinery of another country.

When we fear with and grieve with the Ukraine, there are always echos of the Second World War, the First World War, and other wars. My verse is influenced by the famous sonnet Andreas Gryphius wrote in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, Thrähnen des Vaterlandes / Anno 1636 (Tears of the Fatherland).

Tepid Tides

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Tepid Tides

Amongst the jungle on the isle’s edge
the tepid tides have carved a golden heart
of salt
and rock –

Just so, your voice’s limpid surf has etched
into my soul a secret golden mark
so – drop –
by drop –

Christina Egan ©2023

***
A poem for
Valentine’s Day!
It sounds like a very long relationship…
Inspired by a postcard of a heart-shaped island.

dream laundry

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

dream laundry

fast cars smart cars
fast food slow food
fast luck long luck
you can buy anything

the smiling people
the gliding people
the glossy people
on the posters prove it

you can buy their sofa
you can buy their surfboard
you can buy their smartphone
and relax indefinitely

you can buy their dreams
you can buy their memories
and your own memories
like tinned meat

boots on the beach
music on the pillow
pills for your babies
subscribe to well-being

Front page of newspaper

everything is for sale
everything is on sale
every offer must end
but there is no end of offers

look here click here
see more do more
book now pay later
life is a cake

grab a coffee
grab a seat
snatch a date
download a dream

Christina Egan ©2019

This poem is also published in a local paper today, in print and online: Haringey Community Press, February 2024 (circulation 15,000).

The title is taken from Ingeborg Bachmann’s poem Reklame (1956), where she coins the word “Traumwäscherei” (dream laundry, laundry of dreams or through dreams?). The omnipresent publicity and cheerful music soothe your worries and questions – until they stop and leave you in “Totenstille” (deadly silence, or silence of the dead?).

The idea of downloading memories and dreams comes from science-fiction such as Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner (1982), M. T. Anderson’s novel Feed (2002), and Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun (2021). All three are superb and thoroughly disquieting.

The line “boots on the beach” comes from a particularly stupid – and sexist – video advertising hard drink by showing a young woman in a very scanty dress and very heavy boots. It played on a loop on several screens in a railway station so that there was no escape from it.

The line “music on the pillow” is inspired by Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953), where he predicts ceaseless entertainment broadcast onto our walls, even inviting participation, and into our ears, continuing into our sleep. The result is isolation and despair.

A Speck in the Dark

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

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

A January poem from a northern part of Europe… The bluebird does not live here, but it got into the poem because its feathers are of a luminous orange and blue like the sun and the sky!

Still Here (Still striding)

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Still Here

Still here:
still striding into the drizzle
across the buzzing roads
and straight across the green
with my hair getting frizzy
and my eyes getting dazzled
by the purple orbs
on the tale pale thistles

Still off-screen:
mounting the white cliff
of the sky-scraper
with my own eyes
still off-air
echoing the whistle
of the lime-green parrot
with my own voice
still off-map
facing the buffets
of the wilful winds
with my own face

Still no gloss
on top of the gloss
still no sheen
on top of the cream
upon the click of a button
the command of a machine

Still here:
still pounding
the moistened pavement
with my own feet
still brushing
the sparkling bush
with my own hands
still whispering
some half-rhymed lines
with my own lips

Christina Egan ©2023

Abstract painting of bright squares and rectangles in blue, green, orange, and yellow tones.
Paul Klee: Polyphony (1932). Kunstmuseum Basel.

For my birthday, I am posting some recent verse, which came to me during an enjoyable walk on a dull summer’s day.

I still live largely without social media, and I have still never had a smartphone, nor a motorised vehicle.

I still try to live an authentic life: walking for miles and travelling overland, reading plenty of print and writing letters by hand, growing my herbs and cooking from scratch…

Northern Marsh

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Northern Marsh

Beyond the Roman highway lay
the marshes, lush and veiled and vast,
on gravel and on sun-baked clay,
a northern, watery mirage.

The never-ending summer’s day
had lured me to a gentle ridge;
the brushwood seemed without a way,
the pools and brooks without a bridge.

And yet I knew that people dwelt
amidst the shimmering, shifting maze…
My flung-out road was but a belt
around an untamed country’s waist.

Christina Egan © 2020

cartwheels

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

600 poems posted on this site !

cartwheels

cartwheels of stars
sparkling spilling
turning rolling
sinking back
into the black

and then comets
shooting up –
comets up-
side down!

goldfish in the sky
shooting swerving
flapping lurching
dropping back
into the black

drops of molten gold
like prayers
for the new year
to the Unknown God

Christina Egan © 2017

Snow, Slow / Schnee, langsam

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Patio with some plants at far end covered in thick fresh snow.Snow, Slow
(Christmas Haiku)

Snow, slow, abundant,
covering the sleek black soil
like icing-sugar.

*

Flames of real candles
in the darkened room, like stars
visiting the earth.

*

Tinsel billowing
on the fir-twigs, as if stirred
by an angel’s wing.

***

Schnee, langsam
(Weihnachtshaiku)

Schnee, langsam, reichlich,
fällt auf blanke schwarze Erde…
wie Zuckerstaub.

*

Wachskerzenflammen
im Dämmer… wie Sterne,
herniedergestiegen.

*

Lametta flattert
an Zweigen… wie angerührt
von Engelsflügeln.

 Christina Egan © 2017

 

Real candles, even made of beeswax, are still common on Christmas trees in Germany, and lametta is used more sparingly and usually silver, reminiscent of snow.

Thick snow is nowadays a rare phenomenon in England… Note the tiny Christmas tree taken out after the festive days (and later planted into the soil!). – Photograph: Christina Egan © 2018.