Riders of the Whales
I turn my face towards you
the riders of the waves
the riders of the whales
not as masters
but as friends
I lay the shimmering isles
into your unknown hands
I lift my smile
like a bright-blue flag
to one who wields the wand
and strikes the rock
to turn the wasteland
velvety and fragrant
once again
I lift my cup
of bittersweet brew
to one who turns the wheel
and shifts the clouds
to make the frosty stream
a sparkling wall
once again
I sweep the ashes
and lay the bricks
I feed the seeds for you
I grow the words for you
I beg your forgiveness
and scatter blessings on you
the yet unborn
Christina Egan ©2021
seeds
Apfeltraum / Apple-dream
Apfeltraum
Wohin die Liebe fällt
wie Apfelkerne oder so –
ins Irgend- oder Nirgendwo –
erblüht ein Apfeltraum
vom Garten Eden.
Das leuchtet und verwelkt…
Doch heimlich und gelegentlich,
vermeintlich gar versehentlich,
erwächst ein Apfelbaum
daraus im Leben.
Christina Egan ©2024
Apple-dream
Wherever love may fall
like apple-pips perhaps
– into a field or cracks –
new blossom will enthral,
an apple-dream of Eden.
It burns and fades, that glow…
Yet sometimes secretly,
– by chance or destiny? –
the apple-dream will grow
into an apple-tree.
Christina Egan ©2024
Image: Cover art for sheet music (1920).
Lautlose Rede
Lautlose Rede
Kurven von Tinte und Ketten von Lettern,
Wörter und Worte wie bunte Girlanden
steigen und ziehn über Erde und Meer…
Ketten von Lettern, die leuchten und flattern,
bunte Girlanden, die kreisen und landen,
zaubern dir lautlose Rede her…
Es ist bloß Papier, es sind bloß Gedanken,
doch bringen sie Herzen und Häuser ins Wanken
und fallen gleich Samen in wartenden Sand.
Was ist das Geheimnis der Blätter, der Briefe?
Als ob eine Seele die andere riefe…
Als ob ein Geist den andern entflammt!
Christina Egan ©2023
Some lovely handwritten letters from friends.
Photograph: Christina Egan ©2020.
With great thanks
to my friends who write letters to me –
some have done so for over forty years!
Curling Up
Curling Up
I’m curling up
against the cold
against the world
its random roar
its lazy contempt
its glacial loneliness
I’m curling up
with the sky in my mind
and the sun in my heart
around a seed
already unfurling
and then: uncurling
Christina Egan © 2014
I am at Home in the Darkness
I.
I am at home in the darkness.
At least, dreams shine more brightly here,
lanterns among phantoms,
gold grains in the drifting sand.
Only my dreams
are real,
are true.
II.
All those who wish to die
crave for life, life, lost
in this cavern of wandering shades,
crazed by the thirst for a garden.
Only those who wish to die
are aware,
are alive.
Christina Egan © 2014
Photographs: Christina Egan © 2014 / 2016.
I assume that very, very often when someone feels they want to die or are about to die, they are simply physically unwell — or simply overtired — or simply literally in the dark. If this insight informed our science and our society, we could manage our lives so much better.
The date these three poems were written is significant: it was mid-February, which is when I (like everyone in the northern hemisphere) feels the dark and cold most bitterly, because halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox, the various reserves of our bodies are dangerously low. From late February on, things get better, and this is not a mental phenomenon (little flowers can, after all, not cure leaden fatigue) but a physical fact.
Auf dem Purpurteppich / Royal Purple Rug
Auf dem Purpurteppich der Musik
Auf dem Purpurteppich der Musik,
dichtbepflanzt mit immergoldnen Ranken
und mit himmelfarbner Saat bestickt,
flieg’ ich ohne Angst und ohne Schranken!
Denn der Purpurteppich der Musik
trägt uns mächtiger als die Gedanken
über Wogen, Wolken und zurück,
löst uns Leib wie Geist von allen Banden…
Christina Egan © 2014
On the Royal Purple Rug of Music
On the royal purple rug of music,
thick with tendrils, ever-golden, high,
strewn with seeds the colour of the sky,
limitlessly, fearlessly, I fly!
For the royal purple rug of music
raises us, more powerful than thought,
carries us away, aloft, abroad,
frees both mind and body, frail and fraught…
Christina Egan © 2017
You can find another poem about the incomparable power of music at Quest / Suche (in English and German). Music is not disembodied; it is palpable and all-pervading.
When I described music as a flying carpet, I was thinking of the deep red of oriental rugs, which in German is called ‘purple’; but the English idea of a lilac ‘purple’ is also very appropriate for music.
Photographs: Passionflower with bee; Passionflower with fruit; colours inverted. Christina Egan © 2016.
This Day of June
My 100th post!
This Day of June
zenith of the sun
semaphore of summer
the day when the flowers start melting
into fruit into
seed
the day when the very stones come alive
with lichen with
light
this day of June is yours
this day of June is you
Christina Egan © 2012
Photograph: Christina Egan © 2014
I like to think of a human life as a sequel of seasons:
with glorious midsummer when one is a mature adult!
(‘Midsummer’ around solstice, ‘maturity’ around 35 to 45 years.)
This has also recently become the typical age for marriage
and parenthood. Also, most people now have long lives,
so having a chance to run the course of all seasons.
The two solstices are symbols of the cycles of nature:
at the highest point of the sun, heat and harvest are still to come,
but at the same time, the days are already getting shorter again…
Conversely, the lowest point of the sun sets off the period
of bitter cold and snow, but also of ever longer light and new buds.
The seasons are interlinked, as are all cycles of life and death.
The next post, A Quilt of Light and Shade, describes
the time around summer solstice in London, England.
Ashen Land (For Syria)
Ashen Land
(For Syria)
The only offspring left calls from the eaves.
Some houses have a hundred hollow wounds,
and hamlets of a dozen centuries
surrender to contending winds their rooms.
The olive-trees stretch out their silver leaves
like angels’ feathers in a cry for peace.
Where is the comfort for a bird that grieves,
the peace for ashen land? Is it beneath?
It is beneath the nettles and the shards,
beneath the venom seeped into the field;
it is above the silver heaps of stars,
a seed of unimaginable yield.
Christina Egan © 2016
Photograph: ‘Olivenbäume in Umbrien’ by Adrian Michael.
I found this marvellous illustration on Wikimedia Commons long after I wrote the poem. I had not even thought of the silver bark and leaves resembling ashes…
In the past few years, millions of Syrians have lost their homes and possessions, or their jobs or studies, or their health or their limbs, or their loved ones or their own lives. The national liberation movement has turned into an apparently bottomless civil war, a literally insane religious war, and a vicarious war of outside powers. This conflict will change the face of the Near East and the face of Europe. Meanwhile, the suffering continues.
Let us pray for peace in Syria. All together.
Christina Egan 
