Obituary
I think I died last night,
but none of you noticed.
You talk to me as if
you were talking to me!
The clocks are ticking,
the coffee is dripping…
Even the sun is smiling
while I pretend to carry on.
I was a fount of life,
never looked at, never listened to.
I was an orphan on earth.
I have to write my own obituary.
Christina Egan © 2012
Tottenham Cemetery, London.
Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.
Tâter pour une langue
Il me manque les mots…
Ils flottent sur les flots :
turquoise… îlots…
glaciers et glaçons…
le bateau, le ballon –
ardoise… sillage…
nuit et naufrage –
sans peindre une scène,
sans rendre une chaîne,
parure, ceinture,
magie d’écriture !
Ô langue étrangère,
étrange, passagère,
je te cherche, te chasse,
je regarde dans ma tasse –
il me manque les mots !
Christina Egan © 2016
These lines describe the struggle to write literature in a foreign language. The poet has to look into her coffee-cup for inspiration…
The sequence of words appears to be disconnected but does produce the outline of a scene or story — a vague turquoise and grey image of a dangerous voyage — which also scans and rhymes. So there is the poem!
Christina Egan 