London

The Bricklayers

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Bricklayers


I.

We are the bricklayers:
we lay the next layer of bricks
in colours of coal and cream
and mustard and rust,
and the next and the next,
where it fits, where it clicks,
bricks upon bricks upon bricks.

We are the people
who have made the big city.

We have walked here over the hills,
we have sailed here and settled,
we have woven the brittle wattle
and cast the wayward clay into bricks
and levelled the luminous limestone
for thousands of years. Our stories
still run underneath the pavement,
in the veins of the hidden rivers.

II.

We are the bricks:
We come in in all sizes, in all shades
of beige and brown and black,
the walls next to each other
and often the bricks, mixed,
a mosaic, haphazard and rough,
like the bark of a London plane-tree.

We are the people
who make up the big city.

We have moulded and sawed,
we have woven and sown,
we have carried and ferried
and bartered on the market.
We have brought up and taught,
we have cared for and cured,
invented, imagined,
and immortalised.

Christina Egan ©2023

Northern Marsh

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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

A Lonely Star

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Decorative paper, black with ripples in grey, white, purple.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.

Purple Dusk (Bankside, London)

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Nocturne in Purple and Grey
(Bankside, London)

Hemmed with the sequins of lamps
the silver carpet of the river,
the lilac scarves of the bridges, the buildings.

People are blown about like brown leaves.
A few boats float, dozing,
awaiting brighter days.

The hues of lily and lavender
rise, for a moment, and blend,
with a pale memory of their scents.

Great and grey, the river strides past,
great and grey, the moment slides past,
like a graceful line of wild geese.

Christina Egan © 2005

River scene in dreamy bluish hues: gigantic bridge pillar, man on small boat, city on shore.

 

An early-spring impression in pale lilac and silvery grey. Bankside is the southern shore of the Thames in London.

Many years after I wrote those lines, I noticed the similarity with Turner’s mesmerising Nocturnes and renamed the text!

For a German poem depicting purple dusk see ostseeschlaflied (Darß).

 

Nocturne in Blue and Gold. Oil painting by J. A. M. Whistler, showing Battersea Bridge in London, ca. 1872-1875. Tate Gallery, London.

Notnormal

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Notnormal

Lightningwhite
vast rib vaults
suspended
in brilliantblue
and a rainbow frame
dazzling and doubling and
tripling
around Broadwater Farm.

Large deep-yellow flower shaped like a star with five points.Four feet tracing
pavements pathways
the brooks underground
the trains underground
with the windinyourhair
and the sunonyourskin.

Fivefoldflame flowers
dancing for joy
rolling up into fruit
while ivory butterflies
and bumblebees feed
on lavender forests.

Time to cook
food and eat
food
Time to talk
into a telephone
time to talk
Orange soup in blue bowl on placemat striped orange and blue.talkandlisten
Timetogether.

All this is not normal.

All this is mental
detrimental
to your output
to your outfit
on all platforms
detrimental
to your attitudes
to your platitudes
diametrical
to the narrative.

This is the new
Notnormal.
This must stop
fullstop.

Kestrel egg, quite round, buff and dappled.Otherwise
more stained statues will fall
and heads of heads will roll
and skyscrapers skygraters
surveying the Thames
will be kestrels’ apartments
their amenities reclaimed
by the reeds and the weeds
by the swans and the swifts
by the songs in the dusk
and the
silence
under the crystal crescent.

Christina Egan © 2020

Hoping for a revolution in the suspended time of the C-19 pandemic…

Under the lockdown, the air had become so clear that on May 1st, 2020, I did see a triple rainbow around the apartment blocks of Broadwater Farm.

For more thoughts from the first phase of the pandemic in London in spring 2020, see Hidden Rivers / Verborgne Flüsse.

Courgette flower / Carrot soup. Photographs: Christina Egan © 2020. — Kestrel egg at the Muséum de Toulouse. Photograph by Didier Descouens via Wikimedia. Copyright: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Silent Roads

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Silent Roads
(Pandemic)

limpid morning
liquid noon
falling stars and
swelling moon

roaming foxes
flitting bats
passing faces
passing steps

Red houseboats amongst lush trees and blossoming meadows.real colours
newborn light
flowing hours
breathing tide

sweeping herons
floating boats
swelling meadows
silent roads

real flavour
real sound
real labour
on the ground

nimble hands and
muddy boots
curling vines and
twisting roots

real treasures
on your spade
real colours
on your plate

Tall tomb with urn on top, tilting, on old cemetery.real paper
flowing ink
time to wake and
time to think

time to sleep and
time to slow
time to weep and
time to grow

time to rise and
to rejoice
time to hoist your
real voice

Christina Egan © 2020

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.

Tottenham Marshes / Tottenham Cemetery. Photographs: Christina Egan © 2020.

Bloomsbury, on the Ides of May

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Bloomsbury, on the Ides of May

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,
Edge of tomb, with weeds outside and insidethe birds’ unheeded, untiring, Vespers to God.
See: I lay down the unspoken secret in verse.

Christina Egan © 2007

 

 

Photograph (taken in Tottenham
in July): Christina Egan © 2013.

Tranquil Dragon

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Tranquil Dragon

Embroidered with orange lights
are the fanned steel wings of the bridge

suspended in the summer night,
a tranquil dragon bringing luck. 

Wide is the night and warm,
like the dark wine of old and ardent love.

The sky reads the low, slow river
as my eye reads yours in a dream.

Sparkling with lights is the city,
sparkling with lights is my soul.

Christina Egan © 2003

Dragons, of course, are noble and bring luck in Chinese mythology.

I must have been thinking of Hammersmith Bridge in London.

You can read more poems about suspension bridges at On the Orange Bridge (San Francisco) and Rosenquarzkammern (Malmö).

The Odd Word

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The Odd Word

In this noise this dust this waste
of the traffic the toil
the relationships the part-time
part-heart commitments
the remorseless rap from the radio
the news of murder and treason the trash
worth millions of dollars the scraps
of subtle philosophy the divine
passionate percussion solos
something went missing
and the problem is
we don’t miss it.

In a café full of words and music
like lightning
somebody mentions Hölderlin
(a poet who went mad
after they had treated him
in a lunatic asylum)
and I remember his odd expression
‘the God’
odd isn’t it
‘the’
must be Classical Greek
I’ll clarify that.

Christina Egan © 1998

—

The phrase ‘words and music’ allude to 
a poetry event where I met my partner!
At a later reading, I presented this poem.

geh aus mein herz

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

geh aus mein herz

die braunen bauklotzhäuser
mit farbenkastentüren
die weißen blütenkelche
die sich versonnen rühren

im wind aus samt und seide
die schweren purpurrosen
in Salomonis kleide
die deine finger kosen…

der sommer will dich füllen
die erde lädt dich ein
zu laufen und zu schaffen
zu schauen und zu
sein

Christina Egan © 2011

Salomonis Seide

In Purpur zog der Kaiser einst,
in Scharlachrot der Kardinal,
in Violett die Kaiserin
in einen grüngeschmückten Saal.

So prunken die Geranien
in ihrer Sommerprozession
und rufen in das Gartenrund:
“Wir übertrumpfen Salomon!”

Christina Egan © 2014

The appeal ‘Go out and seek joy’ and the metaphor of King Solomon’s silk are taken from the jubilant hymn and folksong Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud, written by Paul Gerhardt in the middle of the 17th century.

The houses in uniform dull colours with front doors in different bright colours are typical for London. So are the little private gardens with geraniums.

The first poem is contemplative and intense, the second one humorous and light. The last line of the first poem is cut up on purpose: to let the word ‘to be’ resound on its own.

For an English poem about the pageant of summer see Lilac and Lime.