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
frau
außen und
innen
ganz
frau
lebe ich
rund
träume ich
dunkel und
bunt
denke ich
durchdringend
ruhe ich
in mir
rufe ich
mein du
runde ich mich
um mein kind
gebäre ich
mein gedicht
berge ich
mein gebet
auch mein gesicht
ist lehm und
licht
ist ebenbild
Christina Egan © 1990
My early vision of my identity as a woman holds: centred around marriage and motherhood as well as thought and art, different from a man but absolutely equal — created from the same clay, not from a rib, and from the same spirit!
The central image is the round shape: this person is somehow round, gentle; she is rounded, balanced; bending herself around other things and other people in a natural impulse. Only her thoughts can be straight and piercing!
Jewellery from Lanzarote, made of lava, olivine, lapis lazuli. Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.
August Night
The night is short and moist and sweet,
with secret sprouting life replete…
and stark and bitter all the same.
There is no peace on golden wings,
there is no peace from silver limbs…
only a tiny steady flame.
Christina Egan © 2012
In the midst of abundant midsummer,
the narrator has not found peace — neither
through prayer or meditation nor through
the presence of a beloved person.
The following poem laments the unborn dead,
whose graves are nameless and forgotten and
who never saw the light of the sun — although
angels may have taken them elsewhere…
Nur Asche zu essen
Nur Asche zu essen,
nur Lehm statt Brot,
nur Erde zu wissen:
der bitterste Tod.
Den Leib ohne Atem,
das Aug ohne Licht,
das Grab ohne Namen:
das schärfste Gericht.
Die niemals Gebornen,
fast ohne Gewicht,
von Engeln Verborgnen:
Vergesset sie nicht.
Christina Egan © 2018
La Mer, enfin
(Cimetière marin, Sète)
Ô vagues de vers sincères et idolâtres…
Ce vaste pan de verre d’un vert bleuâtre
Entre cieux et ombres suspendu,
Et cet essaim neigeux de tombes en marbre
Parmi les flammes géantes noires des arbres :
La Mer, enfin. J’ai vu et j’ai vécu.
Ces fleurs en bas, comme lèvres entrouvertes,
Impérissables certes, mais inertes,
Moulues de cet argile du Midi ;
Ces fleurs en haut, rosées et scintillantes,
Ces tressaillantes et minces, mais vivantes !
Le Cimetière. J’ai vu et j’ai écrit.
Christina Egan © 2016
Paul Valéry’s tomb on the Cimetière marin, which has become famous through his poem. It is shown and played all day in the neighbouring art museum erected as a homage to him.
These lines are closely related to Valéry’s. The durable but lifeless flowers are of clay and plastic; the perishable but living ones blossom on the bushes around. My picture and poem were created in early January!
An automatic translation into English may convey the meaning of my French homage to Valéry quite well — but not the music of the words!
Photograph: Christina Egan © 2016
Glazed Clay
Two mighty rivers’ ceaseless flow
beneath a high and cloudless sky;
to either side the ochre glow
of arid countries rolling by;
and here and there a golden maze,
the buildings’ cubes, the cities’ grid:
this jar with blue and brownish glaze
from Babylon still mirrors it.
Christina Egan © 2016
Mesopotamian jar (9th to 7th c. BC) . Photograph: © The Trustees of the British Museum.
The city and country of ‘Babylon’ were under Assyrian rule at the time the little jar was made, but I just used the name as the most familiar for all the civilisations of Mesopotamia.
For a German poem about Babylon with the Euphrates and the Hanging Gardens, see Die Hängenden Gärten.
The perfect elegance of this tiny everyday object is an example for the simple beauty I call for in Fewer Things, where you can also see a red Roman bowl.
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
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.
This little song alludes to the nursery rhyme London Bridge is falling down.
Christina Egan 
