A New Poem is Being Born
There is an empty space on greyish paper:
to fill with fire from a rocky scar
and with fresh ashes on a ghostly glacier,
to fix a brilliant moon and matching star.
Christina Egan ©2024
Ein neues Gedicht wird geboren
Die graue Leere des Papiers erfüllt
das Feuer, das aus Felsennarbe quilt,
der Aschenfall auf geisterhaftem Firn,
der Mond mit funkelndem Begleitgestirn.
Christina Egan ©2024
The Komodo Dragons
The roots of the forest are trembling,
the branches are frosted with fear.
The jeeps and the tanks are assembling.
The komodo dragons are near.
Their skin’s like the ice on the river,
they graze and they raze all that breathes.
The roofs of the cottages shiver.
The earth has gone silent. She grieves.
The earth has lost too many children
before the full moon could return.
The komodo dragons are grinning.
The roofs of the cottages burn.
The stable aflame and the steeple –
the ice on the river now thaws.
This is not the war of the people.
This is the triumph of the jaws.
Christina Egan ©2022
This poem was published (as The Comodo Dragons) in the Haringey Community Press (circulation 15,000) in May 2022.
Komodo dragons got their name because they appear to be mythical creatures, but are real animals, huge lizards which can devour their prey almost without trace.
Two years ago today, the Ukraine was brutally attacked by the military machinery of another country.
When we fear with and grieve with the Ukraine, there are always echos of the Second World War, the First World War, and other wars. My verse is influenced by the famous sonnet Andreas Gryphius wrote in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, Thrähnen des Vaterlandes / Anno 1636 (Tears of the Fatherland).
your face of snow
your lips of pearl
encasing dreams
will blink and burst
with bright new beams
your face of snow
your eyes of ice
will bloom and burn
a rainbow’s rise
Christina Egan © 2004
A story where nothing ever happened
The greeting in your eyes, radiant.
The answer in your eyes, immediate.
The longing in your eyes, innocent.
The promise in your eyes, infinite.
Christina Egan © 2004
Glass flask by Eugenes, found in Syria, 3rd c. AD.
Photograph: © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Daedalus on the Battlements
You drag your baggage through the crowd,
and from the loud and glaring maze
you spill into the heavy haze
of autumn fog and stifling fumes,
into a tube you crawl through tubes,
into a bullet aimed at space –
You soar, you blink, anticipate
some mellow light, some subtle blues –
And then you float above the dunes
of salty sand, the plains of ice,
the shadow of a sheet of cloud –
You sail above the blazing skies!
Christina Egan © 2016
Another return to Greece with winter sunshine even before I arrived: a sunset above the clouds! — Daedalus escaped the labyrinth by flying from its walls; the flaming sun plays a key role in this myth.
You may get the sense of this poem quite well in a translation software.
Zauberspruch zur Winterverbrennung
Lohende Flammen, lohende Glut,
schmelzet den Schnee uns, schmelzet den Frost!
Knisternde Äste, knisterndes Holz,
brechet den Bann uns, brechet das Eis!
Christina Egan © 2016
These lines were inspired by two things: the German custom of gathering round huge bonfires to drive the winter out; and those few pagan spells in ancient German which have come down to us.
The sound of the hissing flames and the crackling branches is captured in the verse. The power of winter is interpreted as a spell, an ordeal of darkness and cold, which this spell, the chant or prayer of man, can break.
The only pagan spells in Old High German, probably written down in Fulda monastery in the 9th or 10th century AD. – Photograph: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Cascades of Light
Cascades of light,
of mild, corn-coloured fire:
the sun pours itself out, down,
down across the black gulf
of space and time,
a flame, a smile,
onto the open rose,
the waiting face of the earth.
Christina Egan © 2004
Psalm
As warming as the sun’s first touch
after an age of ice.
The last love tastes like the first one:
radical, innocent.
No need to confirm with fire,
no need to confirm with words.
The world suspended in your eyes –
then life rolling out like a yellow-green valley.
Christina Egan © 2004
Photographs: Roses on the small island of Föhr, meadows on the tiny island of Hooge, both in the North Sea. Christina Egan © 2014.
My Pack of Cards
My pack of cards, when it was new,
was green and yellow, red and blue:
from grass and leaves
to golden sheaves,
from glowing grapes
to frosty flakes!
The leaves peeked out, unfurled, and grew,
flared up, fell off, when they were due.
The fruits were round,
the ice was sound.
My year was clear,
my joy was sheer.
My pack of cards is worn and torn –
my world is pale, and I’m forlorn.
Christina Egan © 2016
In children’s picture books, the four seasons are sometimes painted in four basic colours; everything is in its place, everything is perfect. Of course, it has never been like this: the weather is always unpredictable, particularly north of the Alps.
However, at the place where I grew up — Central Europe — the seasons were more clearly marked and more stable than on the British Isles. I also believe they were more regular: they seem confused and shifted just now. It is disorientating and worrying…
You can find an impression of undefinable weather at Cimmerian Summer — whether it is due to the British climate or to global changes, I do not know.
The poem also expresses nostalgia for childhood, when everything on earth seems in its place. It was inspired by children’s picture books, which often allocate four basic colours to the four seasons.
Photograph: Schloßpark Fulda. Christina Egan © 2014.
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!
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
On the Orange Bridge
I.
The bridge bears tiny trembling lives
across the wild and icy strait,
a miracle of miles.
So moves my life, suspended by
the scarce, but strong and sparkling, stakes
of kisses and of smiles.
II.
If I could pray, my wishes might
arise like incense to the light
and cling to royal robes.
Yet I am weak; all I can give
is work and talk and love and live
on tangy glowing hopes.
Christina Egan © 2008
Golden Gate Bridge. Photograph by Christian Mehlführer.
‘Featured picture’ on Wikimedia Commons.
I wrote these lines just before I went to San Francisco. Coincidentally, I found it so cold there that I could not cross the bridge on foot even in September! Yet, it is gigantic and awe-inspiring, like many things in America, whether natural or man-made.
P.S.: I did get kissed on the bridge…! Thank you!
Christina Egan 