Paul Celan
Whorish other-when. And Eternity
blood-black en-babelled.
Mud-drowned
with your loamy Locks
my Faith.
Two Fingers, hand-far,
The Trumpet-Part
deep in the glowing
Text-Void
at Torch-Height,
in the Time-Hole:
listen in
with your Mouth.
With the voice of the Field-mouse
You squeak up,
a sharp
Clamp,
you bite through my Shirt into the Skin,
a Cloth,
To stand in the Shadow
of the Wound’s-Mark in the Air.
For no-one and nothing to Stand.
Unknown,
for you
alone.
With all, that within finds Room,
I hear, the Axe has flowered,
I hear, the Place is un-nameable,
I hear, the Bread, that looks on him,
heals the Hanged-Man,
the Bread, his Wife baked for him,
I hear, they name Life
Stuttered-over-again World,
where I shall have been
a Guest, a Name,
sweated down from the Wall,
that a Wound licks up.
Illegibility of this
World. All twice-over.
Robust Clocks
agree the Cracked-Hour,
hoarsely.
You, clamped in your Depths,
When you lie
in the Bed of lost Flag-Cloth,
with blue-black Syllables, in Snow-Eyelash-Shadow,
the Crane through Thought-
showers,
comes gliding, steely-
you open for him.
There is a Land that’s Lost,
Moon waxes in its Reeds,
and all that’s turned to frost
with us, burns there and sees.
It sees, for it has Eyes,
Earths they are, and bright.
Night, Night, Alkalis.
In the Almond – what dwells in the Almond?
Nothing.
Nothing dwells in the Almond.
There it dwells and dwells.
In Nothing – what dwells there? The King.
There dwells the King, the King.
There he dwells and dwells.
With every Thought I went
out of the World: there you were,
you my Gentle One, you my Open One, and –
you received us.
Who
says that for us everything died,
that for us there the Eye broke?
There was Earth in them, and
they dug.
They dug and they dug, and so
their Day went by, and their Night. And they did not praise God,
who, so they heard, wanted all this,
who, so they heard, knew of all this.