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
Cimmerian Summer
This lifeless gloom: is it the dusk?
This pale white disc: is it the moon?
Is this a mild day in November?
No: in the land of ceaseless mist
this is the sun; the afternoon;
the lightless first day of September.
Christina Egan © 2015
“ἔνθα δὲ Κιμμερίων ἀνδρῶν δῆμός τε πόλις τε,
ἠέρι καὶ νεφέλῃ κεκαλυμμένοι.”
“There are the land and city of the Cimmerians,
wrapped in mist and cloud.”
Homer, Odyssey, 11:14-15
“Britain is set in the Sea of Darkness.
It is a considerable island. This country is most fertile,
its inhabitants brave, active and enterprising….
but all is in the grip of perpetual winter.”
Muhammad al-Idrisi of Sicily, ca. 1154
Homer never ceases to inspire us. Incidentally, I saw a retelling of the Odyssey last night, at a London playhouse, or rather, amphitheatre! (On this first day of September, the weather is in fact glorious.)
The memory of four clearly marked seasons, full of bright leaves and fruits, and the sorrow about the apparent confusion of the climate are depicted in My Pack of Cards.
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.
Clustering
The world has gone weird:
When you switch the screen on,
any time, the news
contain news, the speeches
convey meaning, and the people
speak into the cameras as if
there were a point in speaking.
Can you see their smiles form dimples?
Like fog used to fill the roads,
so rumours waft and can’t be dispelled
that some representatives of the people
represent the people.
Like flocks of birds used to cover the squares,
so citizens cluster and can’t be dispersed,
until they witness those colours rising
which they have proudly painted themselves.
Christina Egan © 2015
Outrage
Every day now, someone
amongst the suits and ties
gets up and
says something.
Something
simple,
sensible,
and inconceivable.
Something
obvious,
overdue,
and improbable.
Someone sensible,
someone overdue,
someone outrageously
decent.
People lift up their heads and
listen as if
life
were meant to grow and thrive.
Christina Egan © 2015
—
For Jeremy Corbyn MP
—
“Jeremy Corbyn does not need to be theatrical because he is charismatic.
He makes a few simple statements and a thousand people jump off their sofas. It is not his policies that got him to the top but his personality!”
Christina Egan
Letter to the Editor, Evening Standard (London), 22. September 2015
(Please note I had written: “not his policies alone”!)
Christina Egan 
