Paul Celan

“They've healed me to pieces.”

“Illegibilityof this world. All things twice over.The strong clocks justifythe splitting hour,hoarsely.You , clampedinto your deepest part,climb out of yourselffor ever.”

“Wer auf dem Kopf geht, der hat den Himmel als Abgrund unter sich.”

“Über die Ferne der finsteren Flurenhebt mich mein Stern in dein schwärmendes Blut.Nicht mehr am Weh, das wir beide erfuhren,rätselt, der leicht in der Dämmerung ruht.Wie soll er, Süße, dich betten und wiegen,daß seine Seele das Schlummerlied krönt?Nirgends, wo Traum ist und Liebende liegen,hat je ein Schweigen so seltsam getönt.Nun, wenn nur Wimpern die Stunden begrenzen,tut sich das Leben der Dunkelheit kund.Schließe, Geliebte, die Augen, die glänzen.Nichts mehr sei Welt als dein schimmernder Mund.”

“whois invisible enoughto see you”

“water needlesstitch up the splitshadow-he fights his waydeeper down, free.”

“your song, what does it know?Deepinsnow,Eepinow,E-i-o.”

“spills of mire I swallowed inside the tower”

“out of a shardstrewnmadnessI stand upand look upon my hand,how it draws the oneand onlycircle”

“no onebears witness for the witness”

“you're rowing by wordlight”

“in the air, there your root remains, there, in the air”

“They are the efforts of someone who, overarced by stars that are human handiwork, and who, shelterless in this till now undreamt of sense and thus most uncannily in the open, goes with his very being into language, reality-wounded and reality-seeking.”

“A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.”

“Reachable, near and not lost, there remained in the midst of the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes, in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, “enriched” by all this.”

“Speak you too,speak as the last,say out your say.Speak-But don’t split off No from Yes.Give your say this meaning too:Give it the shadow.Give it shadow enough,Give it as muchAs you know is spread round you fromMidnight to midday and midnight.Look around:See how things all come alive-By death! Alive!Speaks true who speaks shadow.But now the place shrinks, where you stand:Where now, shadow-stripped, where?Climb. Grope upwards.Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!Finer: a threadThe star wants to descend on:So as to swim down beliow, down hereWhere it sees itself shimmer:in the swellOf wandering words.”

“With a changing key, you unlock the house wherethe snow of what’s silenced drifts.Just like the blood that bursts fromYour eye or mouth or ear,so your key changes.Changing your key changes the wordThat may drift with flakes.Just like the wind that rebuffs you,Clenched round your word is the snow.”

“Count up the almonds,Count what was bitter and kept you waking,Count me in too:I sought your eye when you glanced up and no one would see you,I spun that secret threadWhere the dew you mused onSlid down to pitchersTended by a word that reached no one’s heart.There you first fully entered the name that is yours, you stepped to yourself on steady feet,the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence,things overheard thrust through to you,what’s dead put it’s arm around you too,and the three of you walked through the evening.Render me bitter.Number me among the almonds”

“Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:then time returns to the shell.In the mirror it's Sunday,in dream there is room for sleeping,our mouths speak the truth.My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:we look at each other,we exchange dark words,we love each other like poppy and recollection,we sleep like wine in the conches,like the sea in the moon's blood ray.We stand by the window embracing, and people look up fromthe street:it is time they knew!It is time the stone made an effort to flower,time unrest had a beating heart.It is time it were time.It is time.”

“How you die out in me:down to the lastworn-out knot of breathyou're there, with a splinter of life.”

“Ein Nichtswaren wir, sind wir, werdenwir bleiben, blühend.die Nichts-, dieNiemandsrose.”

“Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.”

“There was earth inside them, and they dug.”

“Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.”

“Don't sign your namebetween worlds,surmountthe manifold of meanings,trust the tearstain,learn to live.”

“rush of pine scent (once upon a time),the unlicensed convictionthere ought to be another wayof sayingthis.”

“Each arrow you shoot offcarries its own targetinto the decidedlysecrettangle”

“With wine and being lost, withless and less of both:I rode through the snow, do you read meI rode God far--I rode Godnear, he sang,it wasour last ride overthe hurdled humans.They cowered whenthey heard usoverhead, theywrote, theylied our neighinginto one of theirimage-ridden languages.”

“Schwerer werden. Leichter sein.”

“Poetry is perhaps this: an Atemwende, a turning of our breath. Who knows, perhaps poetry goes its way—the way of art—for the sake of just such a turn? And since the strange, the abyss and Medusa’s head, the abyss and the automaton, all seem to lie in the same direction—is it perhaps this turn, this Atemwende, which can sort out the strange from the strange? It is perhaps here, in this one brief moment, that Medusa’s head shrivels and the automaton runs down? Perhaps, along with the I, estranged and freed here, in this manner, some other thing is also set free?”

“EINMAL,da hörte ich ihnda wusch er de Welt,ungesehn, nactlang, wirklich.Eins und Unendlich,Vernichtet,Ichten.Licht war. Rettung.”

“Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends wir trinken und trinken ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng”

“Spring: trees flying up to their birds”