In the cool of the evening, silver-lit, when the tide of noise has receded at last, God walks along the coal-black beach to listen out for the whispering waves, to listen out for prayers and sighs, to look for golden gems in the sand, to look for purity in the hearts.
These lines were inspired by the pristinedeep-black beaches ofLanzarote,where you can find lava and, in some rare places, tiny shards of olivine.
The strange idea that God walks on earth in the evening to observe humans stems from the story of Adam and Eve, when they are still in paradise but have lost their purity of heart (Genesis 3,8).
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.
Afar, I’ve seen the keen and tranquil green
of crater lakes, like mirrors of my dream…
And now I turn to look into your eyes
and find the same mysterious silver gleam
and realise my dream’s materialised.
Love happens, blossoms, thrives – and never dies.
Fürst Schnee und Fürstin Mond verwandeln rings das Land mit sanftem Silberglanz, wenn König Winter thront und lenkt mit weißer Hand den stillen Flockentanz.
Verschwunden ist der Staub, versilbert ist das Schwarz, vorweg verklärt die Welt. Da wundert sich das Aug, da weitet sich das Herz bis an das Himmelszelt.
Ich nehme die Straße der Wolken am Abend, behutsame Brandung aus goldener Gischt, bei Nacht aber über dem langsamen Rade der Sterne die Straße aus silbernem Licht.
Verbleichende Landstriche harren des Regens, verdorrende Büsche erflehen sich Frucht,– und ich bete stumm um das Glück meines Lebens, umschlungen von seligem Hochsommerduft.
The German word for ‘Midsummernight’ sounds the same, but refers to July and August rather than solstice. A person yearns for a companion as the earth and the plants yearn for water. This poem was written in the great heat and draught of 2018 (which I personally enjoyed… rather like a cactus!).
This silvery, surging, curling sound: the whispering leaves of the urban trees… O listen, O listen and look around: the silvery greens like a dream of the seas… And fading away as soon as found.
Wie Sternennebel schweben die schneeweißen Büsche im Nachtgrün am Rande des Parks, und aus dem sattschwarzen Grunde ruft ihrer mehr herauf das funkelnde Zepter des Mondes, als lebte der Amsel Perlengesang das Dunkel hindurch.
Wie übergroße Urwaldblüten liegen in Schlaf geschmiegt die silbernen Gänse, erfroren geglaubte Träume verlorengegebener Kraft. Der Duft von überallher ist schwer, er wiegt, er ist wirklich.
Die Rinnen der Inschrift im Granit des Gartentors füllen sich langsam mit Sinn: Garten des Friedens.
Nothing prepares you
for the heart of the world
lying open before you:
luminous layers
of rosy rock,
jagged and rounded,
leading down, down,
right into the earth.
In the silver silence
of night, you hear
how this heart beats:
it trembles and rumbles,
it nudges your bedstead,
unsettles your cottage,
reminds you of death
and life and the earth.
II.
Nothing prepares you
for the ear of the world,
always wide open,
always upturned,
listening out
for the thud of the pine-cones,
the dance of the deer hooves,
the chant of the milky-way.
You have arrived
at the mouth of the world,
its voice of thunder,
its eloquent silence.
Here you stand, struck,
quiet at long last,
as tiny as an ant,
anointed like a king.
Warm wird noch einmal der Tag, hält die Verfärbung des Laubes auf und verführt das Grün überm Grund zu Gewändern in haltlosen Farben! Scharlach und Schnee und Ultramarin rütteln die Flügel der Seele auf…
Mild wird noch einmal die Nacht, als läge der Frühling vor unseren Füßen, ausgerollt bis zum Horizont, statt des unabwendbaren Herbstes. Silbern und sanft steht der Park und klar wie ein Kristall der Traum.
A warm September day lures new flowers — in bright red, snow white, deep blue — instead of the inevitable discolouring of the leaves, while the night is still ‘silver and gentle’.
For a moment of suspense, instead of autumn spring seems to be unfolding before us…
Not necessarily an autumnal equinox event, but very much in the spirit of it.
Christina Egan 