Visual Poetry

A Window will be Thrust Open

~ Christina Egan ~ 1 Comment

A Window will be Thrust Open

A window will be thrust open
where you forgot there was one,
a glow as of noon will be thrown
over your working hands, over your tired face.

You will look into the mirror
and find upon yourself the gaze of an absent one,
you will look into the eyes of a stranger
and find there your face as if steeped in sunset.

halkett_1938_ohnetitelYou will run down the road
to overtake your shadow,
you will push through all your doubts
to hold that hand, to clasp it tight.

Christina Egan ©2003

No title. René Halkett (1938).
Image with kind permission
of Galerie Klaus Spermann.

Text "A Window will be Thrust Open", 1st stanza, typed up in the shape of a window with a ray of sunshine coming in.



Visual poetry: 1st stanza of A Window will be Thrust Open. Christina Egan ©2024 (Text ©2003). (Click on the image to enlarge it).

The Ship’s Spirit

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Ship’s Spirit

*

A sail,
out in the wind,
white, vast, and fast,
like a cloud in the currents
of the sky and the sea, flowing,
fluttering, flying – what could be better
than being a sail? I will tell you: being a flag! I
bear the colours and I bear the crown,
the crescent, the dragon, the skull;
I dance more nimbly; I spy,
I spot the lands, I am
the ship’s spirit:
a flag!

*

The Ship’s Servant

*

High
above me
the bright dot
of the flag laughs,
while I unfurl, white
and wide like the dawn,
I hurl myself into the wind,
the world, pulling the mighty
ship along!          When it is calm,
I drift… watch…        let the sky smile
through the window in my midst; I swap
stories with my mates, you hear us whisper,
hear us rustle if you listen; and sometimes I rest,
I sleep curled up, in the sweet sleep of a proud sail!

*

Christina Egan © 2016

Toys / Baskets / Bowls

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Toys

I
scanned
the
scattered shapes
heaped around me and picked out
the flowers and fresh fruits and fleeting clouds filled
with sun and added some slanted squares of marble and slate and
trunks of birch-trees and fashioned my finds into this
spinning-top. Just don’t ask what
it means. It’s a toy
I made for
you !

***

Baskets

The most delicately plaited words
still awkward, thick like things.
Bent over pads of paper,
the poet labours, late,
dexterous, impotent
to convey music,
silence…
peace.

Christina Egan © 2012

Roman_bowl_01_MusLon

Bowls

Like bowls of ordinary wood,
robust, adept, like workers’ tools,
these hands seem empty. Yet they are
filled to the brim, invisibly:
with jewel-like ideas the one,
the other with tranquillity.

Christina Egan © 2012

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

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 !

By the Brittle Brown Fence

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

By the Brittle Brown Fence

By the brittle brown fence,
bright, arresting the eye,
an explosion of pink,
pure pink!
Low, silent, intense, incessant,
a pillow of raspberry colour,
triumphant trumpet
of early summer:
my azalea
in May!

Christina Egan © 2006

The shape of the poem emulates the content…
and in this display, it is also true for the colour!