building

The Sun God’s Roads

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Sun God’s Roads

I saw them emerging from forest and fog,
the roads of the fiery barbarian god,
I saw them, I walked them, I measured them – but
I dragged on their slopes and I slipped in their mud.

They followed the creek, they followed the crest,
they followed the sun all the way to the west,
they lead to the market, they lead to the fort,
they lead all the way to the northernmost port.

My roads ran across their fords and their fields,
as smooth as a line of square Roman shields,
as straight as the flight of a sure Roman lance,
as hard as its tip, in a steady advance.

Some sauntering highways are right underneath
while others meander through meadow and heath.
I took what I needed, I bridged all the gaps,
I dropped all the rest off the Caesar’s clear maps.

Minerva brought wisdom and Mars announced peace:
we drained a few swamps and we parcelled the leas,
we left the round huts by the winding wet way
and stamped our rectangles into the clay.

My map showed a ragged and rugged old isle
with gridlines unrolling now mile after mile.
I marked it as Jove had commanded us – but
I still muse about the strange tracks in the mud…

Christina Egan ©2019

On this blog, the year always starts with a Roman road. Here, a civil engineer from antiquity reports how his straight highways and rectangular buildings cut right across the uneven and muddy terrain, winding paths, and round buildings of the native Britons. You can still observe this striking phenomenon in Stonehenge, Silchester, and many other places.

We may assume that enthusiasm for this turn of civilisation was not universal. The Celts thought, for instance, that it was silly to worship gods in temples, as if in boxes, instead of in nature. As regards the superb new roads, they were immensely useful for the transport of goods and ideas, but served first of all for the movement of the legions and of metals mined in Britain.

The Bricklayers

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Bricklayers


I.

We are the bricklayers:
we lay the next layer of bricks
in colours of coal and cream
and mustard and rust,
and the next and the next,
where it fits, where it clicks,
bricks upon bricks upon bricks.

We are the people
who have made the big city.

We have walked here over the hills,
we have sailed here and settled,
we have woven the brittle wattle
and cast the wayward clay into bricks
and levelled the luminous limestone
for thousands of years. Our stories
still run underneath the pavement,
in the veins of the hidden rivers.

II.

We are the bricks:
We come in in all sizes, in all shades
of beige and brown and black,
the walls next to each other
and often the bricks, mixed,
a mosaic, haphazard and rough,
like the bark of a London plane-tree.

We are the people
who make up the big city.

We have moulded and sawed,
we have woven and sown,
we have carried and ferried
and bartered on the market.
We have brought up and taught,
we have cared for and cured,
invented, imagined,
and immortalised.

Christina Egan ©2023

Ode to London Wall

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Ode to London Wall

Moss is conquering your broken stones,
weeds are rooting between your bricks;
but you still stand tall, Wall,
facing the winds, the seasons, the years.

The round foundations of your towers
harbour herbs now, neatly labelled;
but your walkways bore watchmen once,
to guard the goods going round and the people.

You lie at my feet now, tall Wall,
I look down from the walkway above you;
but when I step down by two thousand years,
I see you could shelter me still or crush me.

And then I seem to remember –
we have met before, Wall –
you guarded me indeed –
and I guarded you!

On the treacherous clay we erected you,
in the obnoxious fog and sleet:
even and straight and strong as a rock,
forming a line in the marshy meadow,

forming a square along the vague river,
forming a knot in the net of roads,
from London to Chester and York,
from Paris to Sousse and Palmyra.

O Wall of soldiers and explorers,
O Wall of merchants and accountants:
yes, you still stand tall and you talk,
you tell me to tell your story to all.

Christina Egan © 2015

High wall of neatly piled stone and brick in the midst of the city

You can see a section of the Wall of London and learn more about it in the Roman Galleries of the Museum of London. A visit there inspired me to write these lines. I talk to the stones as they talk to me; and I pass their story on.

Photograph: Roman city wall near Tower Hill Tube station,
by Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz).

—

London Wall Had Fallen Down

London Wall had fallen down,
brick by brick and stone by stone;
in the crenellation’s crown,
storks and starlings built their home.

London Wall stood in the mud,
but we fixed it brick by brick,
and we filled the wasteland up
with new lanes across the grid.

London Wall was melting down,
but we used it stone by stone;
and we built a bigger town
on the ground of proud old Rome!

Christina Egan © 2015

—

After the end of the Roman Empire, the Roman City of London was left uninhabited for generations, while a new city sprung up next to it; later, the original precincts became the centre again. This area is now known as ‘The City of London’, although it forms only a small part of the centre of town.

Musical score of 'London Bridge is falling down'

 

This little song alludes to the nursery rhyme London Bridge is falling down.