A Lonely Star
A lonely star surveys the streets.
The dark is brownish, blurred by lamps.
The cold is damp and slowly creeps
through draughty windows, long-locked doors.
Bats flit about like ghostly hands.
A blinking helicopter roars;
the city stirs and sighs and sleeps.
The star looks down and frowns and stands.
Christina Egan © 2017
Decorative paper. Image provided
by British Library through Flickr.
Curling Up
I’m curling up
against the cold
against the world
its random roar
its lazy contempt
its glacial loneliness
I’m curling up
with the sky in my mind
and the sun in my heart
around a seed
already unfurling
and then: uncurling
Christina Egan © 2014
I am at Home in the Darkness
I.
I am at home in the darkness.
At least, dreams shine more brightly here,
lanterns among phantoms,
gold grains in the drifting sand.
Only my dreams
are real,
are true.
II.
All those who wish to die
crave for life, life, lost
in this cavern of wandering shades,
crazed by the thirst for a garden.
Only those who wish to die
are aware,
are alive.
Christina Egan © 2014
Photographs: Christina Egan © 2014 / 2016.
I assume that very, very often when someone feels they want to die or are about to die, they are simply physically unwell — or simply overtired — or simply literally in the dark. If this insight informed our science and our society, we could manage our lives so much better.
The date these three poems were written is significant: it was mid-February, which is when I (like everyone in the northern hemisphere) feels the dark and cold most bitterly, because halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox, the various reserves of our bodies are dangerously low. From late February on, things get better, and this is not a mental phenomenon (little flowers can, after all, not cure leaden fatigue) but a physical fact.
am kalten kamin
die eingerahmten flammen
von süßer sonnenkraft
sinken in sich zusammen
in kalter mitternacht
das feuer das dich blendet
in wildem geisterglanz
hat sich zuletzt verschwendet
zu tode sich getanzt
eh noch der morgen graute
liegt ausgelaugt der herd
und über deinem haupte
hängt sichtbar nun das schwert
Christina Egan © 2017
Winter Sunset
If only I could fly
across the icy sky
into the dying sun,
so all my tears,
my wants and fears
and wanderings would be none.
If only I could fall
into the fiery ball
and warm and melt away,
and then be shot,
a sparkling dot,
into a new-born day.
Christina Egan © 2003
Image: No title. René Halkett (1938). Image with kind permission of Galerie Klaus Spermann.
Quiet Fire
In balmy darkness
I was floating
over sand and salt,
along the garland of lights,
below the curtain of stars…
One fell.
In a flash, I thought of
my distant beloved one,
in a flood, it came back,
the impossible future.
He, too,
had come like a shooting-star,
fair, fast, in a sweeping curve,
with careless grace,
like a message from life.
Cold is the sea now and rough,
with dullness tainted the days
and the sparkling tent of the night.
The quiet fire has passed:
the face that mattered.
Around me is autumn,
and I know that spring will return
and my youth will not.
The voice that struck me is silent;
and my heart eats death.
Christina Egan © 2012
A memory of the Mediterranean Sea, where one can swim, and swim even in after dark, even into autumn…
Decorative paper. Image provided by British Library through Flickr.
Le tesson
En février givré, je fouille
les feuilles mortes pour des fleurs
modestes et fortes et courageuses :
soldats contre la froideur
ou des pierres précieuses
éparpillées en bas, fragments
pâlis de la Cité Céleste
que quelques éblouis attestent.
Parfois, une sphère lumineuse
me frappe, vive mais tranquille :
plutôt que le premier bouton
ton œil est le tesson qui brille.
Christina Egan © 2017
The Shard
In frosty February, I scour
decaying leaves for the first flower:
some modest soldiers, strong and bold
against the kingdom of the cold,
or precious stones on muddy ground,
some faded fragments of the round
of Heavenly Jerusalem,
that dazzling more-than-real realm.
At times a circle full of light,
as calm as lively, strikes my sight:
but rather than spring’s early guard
your eye is the resplendent shard.
Christina Egan © 2017
For a German and English parallel poem about the first spring flowers, go to my previous post, King Spring / König Frühjahr.
Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.
Crocusses with honey-bee, captured in London in mid-February!
December Date
The afternoon is royal blue,
with tiny lights festooned,
I rush, I’m flushed, I look for you —
we never meet too soon!
The windows decked with evergreen,
with tinsel and with gold —
and there, my angel, genuine,
a candle in the cold!
Christina Egan © 2015
Photograph by Gabriel Pollard [CC BY-SA 2.5].
Featured picture on Wikimedia Commons.
Arles im Winter
Die Fensterläden wie ein Farbenkasten,
kornblumenblau und flieder und türkis;
die goldnen Wände, die im Wind verblaßten,
die Gasse, die den kurzen Schnee verschlief.
Die Bogengänge wie bestickte Bänder,
die Krippenbilder wie ein Glockenspiel…
Und das Theater wechselnder Gewänder,
wo nie – seit Rom – der letzte Vorhang fiel.
Die weiche Luft am weiten Strom von Norden,
wo beißendkalter Wind bis eben blies,–
er wälzt sich meerwärts, kostet wohl schon morgen
Kornblumenblau und Flieder und Türkis!
Christina Egan © 2016
The Old Town of Arles is huddled together within the precincts of the Roman city, next to the vast River Rhône and close to its mouth into the Mediterranean Sea – with the churches built of the stones of the temples and the houses built with the stones of the theatre.
Down the funnel of the river valley, there is a forceful and often icy wind, the Mistral; but there is also a mild wind from south, the Wind from the Sea, which may warm up the city in the midst of winter, so that you can sit in the Roman ruins…
There are exhibitions of nativity scenes and figurines in all styles, even contemporary, at Saint-Trophime; in another mediaeval church, a whole side-chapel is filled with a model village with rocks and trees, running water and flickering fire, and hundreds of tiny local people.
I have written another poem on Arles and the Vent de la mer in French and English. This one here may work quite well in a translation software.
Photographs: Arles. Christina Egan © 2011.
The First of December
The ample, even, hand-like leaves
carelessly crumpled up by the frost
overnight,
the luscious colonies of moss
dusted with ice in the colourless light
of the day.
And we cannot deny this is still only autumn:
the yearly slow and sure descent
towards the cold.
This is the month of shrinking days,
of darkening hair and shivering skin
touched by damp.
This is the season of flickering lights,
some of them real, all of them glimmering
drops of hope.
Christina Egan © 2012
Christina Egan 