pregnancy

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.

The Mooness Grows / Die Mondin rollt

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

The Mooness Grows

The Mooness grows: she’s almost round.
She steps out of a wooded mound.
She knows:
The sea will swell, the sap will well,
a thousand creatures will give birth.
The earth
is restless, waiting for Queen Moon
and for King Sun to round her girth,
her life.
The fruit is red, the fruit is ripe.
The Mooness strews her silent spell:
She glows.

Christina Egan © 2016

Die Mondin rollt

Die Mondin rollt, ein Bronzegong,
vom vielgezackten Horizont
das königsblaue Rund empor.
Ihr hoheitsvoller Ruf erschallt,
bis alles bebend widerhallt
in Stein und Blatt, in Bein und Ohr.

Noch einmal steigt, noch einmal loht
nach Mittagsglut und Abendrot
des vollen Sommers Vollmondschein.
Der Bronzegong um Mitternacht
hat neues Leben angefacht
in Ohr und Bein, in Blatt und Stein.

Christina Egan © 2016

These two poems about the ‘Mooness’ are very similar (and written at the same time) but not translations of each other.

In Greek and Latin, the moon is linguistically and mythologically female, and we should have such a word in English and German.

As a woman, I feel instinctively related to the powerful moon and all life cycles — irrespective of reproductive capacity or activity.