Is this moon new or young, a sliver or a crescent, silver or golden in the deep blue, the newly deep sky, is it striking or dazzling or mesmerising?
Is this a late spring, belated and all the more welcome, bursting with life, with green, bright green, saturated with rain and sunshine, saturated with colour and heat, heat unfamiliar and all the more welcome, or is it sudden summer?
Is this life at last, is this joy, is this joy of life, is it zest, is it just new life-force or is it happiness or elation or bliss?
Reality, as it laps up against the shores of your eyes and your ears and your nose, reality as it washes over the leas of your skin and seeps beneath, cannot be captured in words, not even in verse: reality, so dense it feels like a dream, is not a dream cloud nor a word cloud.
Although this poem would make a good one, with the message of sudden summer sounding out like birdcall, flooded with light and colour, steeped in joy, as if words were written from life and for life, as if words were part of life, of the wide earth and the deep sky and the reality beyond, of the ever-flowing life-force.
Word cloud of the poem Sudden Summer (colours edited but randomly allocated).
Happiness Beyond (Word Cloud)
Your life is a green reality, it reads in large green letters, and newly young; the sky is golden at last, it states in fine golden letters, and saturated with joy; eyes and ears are bursting with wide bright light, it adds in silvery white; and at the edge there is happiness beyond colour on deep-blue ground.
These are welcome words, sudden and possibly deep, a mesmerising message from slivers of verse in your ears, from the new dream poem, from the word cloud of Sudden summer: Your life is a green reality saturated with joy under the newly young moon.
die ungeahnten sonnenglanz vergießen die regenschauer und den regenbogen zu einem milden meeresgrau verwoben die augen sollen meine verse grüßen. dem nebelland das immerkalte wogen in ungestümem reigentanz umschließen den inseln voller sprühendgrüner wiesen sind jene augen ursprünglich enthoben. drum frag ich nicht nach lilien und lavendel die flammen sprühen auf gebeugtem stengel noch nach des südens uferlosem blau nichts brauche ich als meinen kleinen garten wo alle wunder lächelnd meiner warten die bunte welt geballt in sprühendgrau.
This sonnet is part of a cycle of 14 poems, whereby each line of the first one (rosengarten I. tiefversteckt) furnishes the first line of a new sonnet.
The island described here is Ireland, but the cycle takes you to other islands, as well as to the palace gardens of Würzburg, Germany, which first inspired me.
Word cloud of colours in the German sonnet cycle (rosengarten I-XIV), generated on theSimple Word Cloud Generator. In the middle are “colourful”, “green”, and “golden”. Since the colours of the roses are not described, the roses themselves are added.
Tiny and arched was the bridge, of gleaming green wood, between leaves of palm-trees, lush, polished, larger than a new-born child. Through the muddy water underneath, something slid by, slid through: a blood-red carp. I was startled, I was struck. A fish like a flame.
Auf der weiten Erdenscheibe kauert meine kleine Bleibe still in pfauenblauer Nacht; und aus ungeheurer Ferne steigen unzählbare Sterne wie von Zauberhand entfacht.
Auf den unsichtbaren Gleisen durch den Weltraum aber kreisen zwei Gestirne um mein Dach: Glück muß mir das güldne schreiben, doch das grüne bringt mir Leiden,– zwei verflochten tausendfach.
On the vast orb of the earth clings my cottage to the turf, hushed in night of peacock-blue; from unfathomably far still emerges star on star, magically lit anew.
See, on secret tracks in space two celestial bodies trace orbits round my own abode: golden star and green must bring happiness and suffering – interwoven thousandfold.
For more musings on destiny, see the previous post, Zugefallen. There are sparkling stars in Zugefallen and flickering candles in the poem Zugewogen. Destiny is written in the stars, or rather, in the Heavens.
Nebra sky disk (Himmelsscheibe von Nebra), ca. 4000 years old. Photograph: JoKaliauer via Wikimedia Commons. Copyright: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Callisto, moon of Jupiter. Photograph taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in 2001. NASA/JPL/DLR(German Aerospace Center), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Afar, I’ve seen the keen and tranquil green
of crater lakes, like mirrors of my dream…
And now I turn to look into your eyes
and find the same mysterious silver gleam
and realise my dream’s materialised.
Love happens, blossoms, thrives – and never dies.
Über das zerrissene blütensprühende Gestein legt sich das zerschlissene Fischernetz im Sonnenschein: Eselswege, Autostraßen, steil und krumm und oftgeflickt, Klosterhöfe, Promenaden, salzbehaucht und dufterquickt.
Netz von Stiegen, Steigen, Pfaden wandelt flugs ein Wolkenbruch zu Kanälen und Kaskaden, füllt die ausgedörrte Schlucht, tränkt die berstendgrünen Triften, häuft den sonnengoldnen Sand, formt den Lehm der stolzen Küsten, höhlt die wilde Felsenwand…
Coal tits are weaving through the leaves, leaves tinged with gold and tinged with rust; the earth, relieved of darkness, breathes before the leaves will turn to dust.
Coal tits are chirping in the leaves, wings tinged with fire, tinged with ashes; their song is weaving with the breeze through our windows’ rigid meshes…
The lawn lies like an emerald bay, like golden sand the fallen leaves. The wind is waltzing on the roofs, the wind is leaping through the streets, it rolls into the shimmering heaps, it stirs them up, it whirls them up, it sweeps a wilful whispering surf onto the sun-bathed autumn turf! The earth takes one last joyful breath before the shade falls like a spell. That there is so much death in life and so much dancing life in death…
This silvery, surging, curling sound: the whispering leaves of the urban trees… O listen, O listen and look around: the silvery greens like a dream of the seas… And fading away as soon as found.
Wie Sternennebel schweben die schneeweißen Büsche im Nachtgrün am Rande des Parks, und aus dem sattschwarzen Grunde ruft ihrer mehr herauf das funkelnde Zepter des Mondes, als lebte der Amsel Perlengesang das Dunkel hindurch.
Wie übergroße Urwaldblüten liegen in Schlaf geschmiegt die silbernen Gänse, erfroren geglaubte Träume verlorengegebener Kraft. Der Duft von überallher ist schwer, er wiegt, er ist wirklich.
Die Rinnen der Inschrift im Granit des Gartentors füllen sich langsam mit Sinn: Garten des Friedens.
Christina Egan 
