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.
Damp wood, damp walls: the world smells of decay. The scented roses are resurgent, yet too many leaves are falling, fallen, wet across the spotless lawn, the winding way. Above Bruce Castle’s reddish parapet and wayward weather-vane, the veil of grey is torn apart to let a dazzling ray caress the clock-face, still for summer set. The light is fierce and will not be subdued, the clock smiles sky-blue with a rim of gold, the grass is glittering and fresh and bold, and then the sky itself triumphs, renewed. All this eclipsing, flash on flash, they pass: the parakeets, a dozen shooting-stars.
Eben
habe ich das Leben entdeckt.
Es lag versteckt
unter einem unscheinbaren Stein
am Straßenrand.
Ich kniete nieder,
hob ihn hoch,
und etwas leuchtete,
alles leuchtete auf –
als hätte die Sonne hinübergeschaut
in ihrem enthobenen Lauf,
als wäre der Himmel erblaut
und ich stürmte den Hügel hinauf –
doch stand ich noch
unverwandt
mit dem Stein in der Hand…
Eben
habe ich das Leben entdeckt.
Es war verdeckt
vom Geschnatter und Geknatter
von vielzuvielen Bildschirmspielen,
von Telefonen und Megaphonen
und Megamaschinenmusik.
Nur einen Augenblick
lag der Stein in meiner Hand,
graublau
und genau
und still.
So hält Gott die ganze Welt
in seiner Hand,
ins stille goldne uferlose Licht,
und sie weiß es nicht.
While London closed down to protect itself from the 2020 coronavirus, I was cut off from my job and from the internet for a while. (This blog ran on as pre-scheduled.)
I was very fortunate to spend many hours outdoors, working in my garden or walking under the countless trees and along the hidden rivers of London, and through the suburban roads, cleared at last of traffic and crowds. Spring brought splendid sunshine, as if it were already high summer.
There was time. There was air. There was life. For many who were not ill or caring for those who were ill, this must have been one of the best times of their life.
I will remember: it was on the Ides of May, the light was lingering late, still bright behind the fading curtains of clouds, ready to burst into colourful banners; so were the buds in the parks. Short were the shades of the columns and those of the crowds ceaselessly weaving around the corners of concrete. I will remember the weary assembly of tombstones, too weathered to count as a witness, the lime-green life pushing out from the cracks, the benches eager for laughter, the birds’ unheeded, untiring, Vespers to God. See: I lay down the unspoken secret in verse.
There’s more to life behind the troubled scene, more light than mighty, timeless words can mean: there is a truth that never lies, a truth that fills the earth with fragrant breath.
There’s more than we can fathom and esteem, or ask for, seek for, need, desire, dream: there is a love that never dies, a love that will give birth in very death.
Christina Egan 