poetry

Unterm Abendstern

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Unterm Abendstern

I.

Sternenklar

Im Dämmer schwebt der neugeborne Mond,
ein unhörbares Gutenachtgeläute.
Die Amsel, die auf der Antenne thront,
ruft sternenklar… Mein Herz zerspringt vor Freude.

II.

Pflücken

Und immer wieder Amsel, Mond und Rose,
und immer wieder Wehmut und Entzücken…
Und unterm Abendstern das grenzenlose
Verlangen, diesen Augenblick zu pflücken.

III.

Xylophon

Ich brauche nichts als diese Vorstadtstraße,
den Blattgoldhimmel und den Vogelruf,–
und dann das klare Xylophon der Sprache,
die Hunderte verklärter Verse schuf.

Christina Egan ©2019

Tall brick chimney with blackbird sitting on top.
Blackbird on English chimney.
Photograph: Christina Egan ©2018.

Written in June, when the days are longest and the life-giving beauty of summer unfolds.

The senses mingle: the moon’s light is as bright as a bell and the blackbird’s call is as bright as a star.

The poems themselves are an echo of starlight and birdsong, created on the xylophone of language.

The subject of art can be as small as a summer evening above a random street– as small and as great.

glanztanzend / dazzle-dancing

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

glanztanzend

glitzerndbunte
einzigartige
grußkarten
glückwünsche

aufgereiht
auf rotem faden
über kerzen
glanztanzend

dennochlächelnd
zurückzwinkernd
blickweckend
herzwärmend

glitzerndbunte
einzigartige
käfergedichte
lindwurmwörter

dank tinte
oder tastatur
überseesegelnd
überschallfliegend

von geist zu geist
von aug zu ohr
lautspielerei
wortzauberei

Christina Egan ©2023

A handful of hand-crafted Christmas cards in different styles and colours.

dazzle-dancing

sparkly-motley
one-of-a-kind
greeting cards
congratulations

lined up on
red thread
above candles
dazzle-dancing

smiling anyway
winking back
awakening gazes
warming hearts

sparkly-motley
one-of-a-kind
little beetle poems
dragon’s tail words

overseas sailing
supersonic flying
thanks to ink
or keyboard

from mind to mind
from eye to ear
sound-play
word-spell

Christina Egan ©2024

A handful of hand-crafted Christmas cards in different styles and colours.

The poem does what it describes: inventing words, lining them up, and sending them to others to greet them and cheer them up!

The newly coined terms had to be re-created in English – where they do of course not look as impressive. “lindwurmwörter”, for instance, really sounds and looks as long as a dragon, while “dragon’s tail words” looks like three words, even though I added the tail in to get a similar effect in meaning and length.

In England, many people hang Christmas cards up on golden strings. During the festive seasons of 2022/23 and 2023/24, I crafted many greeting cards myself, each of them unique.

Seasonal greeting cards. Artwork: Christina Egan ©2022/©2023/©2024. Photographs: Miriam Hornsby ©2024.

Still Here (Still striding)

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Still Here

Still here:
still striding into the drizzle
across the buzzing roads
and straight across the green
with my hair getting frizzy
and my eyes getting dazzled
by the purple orbs
on the tale pale thistles

Still off-screen:
mounting the white cliff
of the sky-scraper
with my own eyes
still off-air
echoing the whistle
of the lime-green parrot
with my own voice
still off-map
facing the buffets
of the wilful winds
with my own face

Still no gloss
on top of the gloss
still no sheen
on top of the cream
upon the click of a button
the command of a machine

Still here:
still pounding
the moistened pavement
with my own feet
still brushing
the sparkling bush
with my own hands
still whispering
some half-rhymed lines
with my own lips

Christina Egan ©2023

Abstract painting of bright squares and rectangles in blue, green, orange, and yellow tones.
Paul Klee: Polyphony (1932). Kunstmuseum Basel.

For my birthday, I am posting some recent verse, which came to me during an enjoyable walk on a dull summer’s day.

I still live largely without social media, and I have still never had a smartphone, nor a motorised vehicle.

I still try to live an authentic life: walking for miles and travelling overland, reading plenty of print and writing letters by hand, growing my herbs and cooking from scratch…

This anthology of poetry is back!

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Liebe Leserinnen und Leser! Dear Readers!

Ich bin wieder da :o) ! My anthology of poetry is back!

Some of you have wondered why I have not posted anything recently. I have continued writing, of course, and have had poems published in newspapers and on calendars, which I shall all put up here also.

Two years ago, I had already published 600 of my best poems on this site, so I have raised my target from 500 to 1,000 poems! This is not about mass, though, this is about quality of poetry.

Alert observations, intense emotions, clear insights.

Vivid images and musical language.

Beauty discovered and created.

Life condensed into art.

Art celebrating life.

Half of the texts are in English and half in German, so I hope that many readers in many countries can enjoy them. My comments are in English, trusting that most of you can read them easily. Remember that automatic translations cannot convey the magic of literary language. Sometimes, I translate my verse, or rather, recreate it in the other language. (These posts are marked as Parallel poems.)

Feel free to use my poems and photos for any non-commercial purposes as long as you always give my name or the name of the site (Christina Egan – Poetry & Plays), and if it is online, link to the post or the site. (See copyright note below.)

Keep reading and reciting poetry – and perhaps writing some!

The Author, Christina Egan

Light-blue sky and light-green ocean in the background, white tombs in the foregrund; in the front, a flat marble slabs decorated with two large pink flowers, one in clay and one in plastic.
Paul Valéry’s tomb on the Cimetière marin. Photograph: Christina Egan ©2016
Creative Commons Licence

Christina Egan by Christina Egan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Quintessence

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Quintessence

I’ll fill a crystal flask
with silver melodies,
a magic drop to last
for years and centuries.

I shall distil my days
to mellow poetry,
and distant lands will taste
the quintessence of me.

I’ll fill a crystal flask
with pearls of memory:
my solitary task,
my faithful alchemy.

The five pure elements’
fifth essence, finally,
their forces and their scents:
as fresh as fiery!

Christina Egan © 2016

Photograph: Glass flask by Eugenes, found in Syria,
3rd c. AD. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
I  had similar flasks from the Roman era in mind
when I wrote the poem but did not know this one.

Bloomsbury, on the Ides of May

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

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.

frau (außen und innen)

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

frau

außen und
innen
ganz
frau

lebe ich
rund
träume ich
dunkel und
bunt
denke ich
durchdringend

ruhe ich
in mir
rufe ich
mein du
runde ich mich
um mein kind

gebäre ich
mein gedicht
berge ich
mein gebet

auch mein gesicht
ist lehm und
licht
ist ebenbild

Christina Egan © 1990

Detail of woman, with her body, clothes, and jewellery describing curves.

 

My early vision of my identity as a woman holds: centred around marriage and motherhood as well as thought and art, different from a man but absolutely equal — created from the same clay, not from a rib, and from the same spirit!

The central image is the round shape: this person is somehow round, gentle; she is rounded, balanced; bending herself around other things and other people in a natural impulse. Only her thoughts can be straight and piercing!

 

Jewellery from Lanzarote, made of lava, olivine, lapis lazuli. Photograph: Christina Egan © 2017.

die unterseite der ahornblätter

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

die unterseite
der ahornblätter

die unterseite
der ahornblätter
zu entziffern
bin ich bestellt

die verästelungen
der äderchen
die lebenslinien
und altersflecken

pergament
durchsichtig
gegen das licht
liebesgedichte

bettlerschalen
dankbar und demütig
bischofskelche
frohgemut hochgemut

die unterseite
der ahornblätter
zu besingen
bin ich geboren

Christina Egan © 2019

—

Die Unterseite der Möwenflügel

Die Unterseite der Möwenflügel
läßt mich die sinkende Sonne erahnen,
das ragende Raster der Fensterspiegel
darf mir ihr blendendes Angesicht rahmen!

Dies ist die Kreuzung voll Hast und Getöse,
Räder und Füße wie wirbelndes Laub,–
dies ist der Augenblick, den ich erlese,
Blitzen und Blinzeln im zehrenden Staub.

Christina Egan © 2019

The Odd Word

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

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.

Fluchtlinien

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Fluchtlinien

Ich bin relativ normal.

Ich trage normal verrückte Klamotten
und subventionierte Brillengestelle.
Ich prüfe mit Mühe die Reife der Avocados
und wehre mich nicht gegen Rostbratwurst.

Ich steige beinahe rechtzeitig in den Bus
und steige am richtigen Bahnhof um.
Ich sitze am Bildschirm und tippe.
Ich gieße die Dickblattgewächse im Büro.

Ich kaufe die richtigen Zeitungen
und entsorge sie ordnungsgemäß.
Ich gehe auf die richtigen Demos
und brülle ein bißchen herum.

Ich rede von Konflikt und Diskurs
und folge den Regeln der Republik.
Ich sitze am Bildschirm und tippe.
Ich gieße die Dickblattgewächse im Büro.

Ich buche das Zimmer mit Seeblick
und Reiserücktrittsversicherung,
ich recherchiere die Sonnencreme
und die regionale Sozialgeschichte.

Ich wirke normal; es gibt Zeugen.

Und die ganze Zeit, die ganze lange Zeit
lebe ich entlang der unsichtbaren Linien
auf den Fluchtpunkt deiner Gestalt,
deines Lächelns, deiner Lippen.

Als käme darauf alles an.

Ich renne den Strand entlang,
wild wie der Wellenschlag,
ich werfe deinen Namen in den Wind
mit den Schreien der Möwen.

Aber nur, wenn mich niemand hört.

Ich schreibe Verse über Sommerwolken
und Schwäne zwischen den Wellenkämmen
und Orgelklänge und Engel vielleicht
und dann noch ein paar Obdachlose.

Aber eigentlich suche ich nur dich.

Christina Egan ©2018

White sandy beach, deep blue water and sky; German beach chairs in the foreground; two swans in the surf.

The first part of the poem is a portrait of normal and politically correct behaviour: healthy diet, regular work, keeping pot-plants, recycling waste, joining in demonstrations, and so forth.

Woman standing on sandy beach, in a blue-and-white striped dress, with a heart motif on her chest.The second part reveals the inner world of the same ordinary citizen, passionate and unreasonable: secretly in love with someone far away… and writing verse about clouds and swans.

The title has a double meaning: ‘vanishing lines’ and ‘flight lines’, as in ‘escape routes’.

Beach of Świnoujście (Swinemünde) on the Baltic Sea, complete with the hooded beach chairs typical of Germany and the swans which live in the estuary. – Photographs: Christina Egan ©2017.