by Paul Celan
spirationary torrents un-
locked, the
bouncing breasts in the sharp
verse-fibula-yoke,
fall with me through
images, rocks, numbers.
* * *
THE OUNCE OF TRUTH deep inside delusion,
past it
the trays of the balance
roll,
both together, in conversation,
the law, raised in struggle to heart-
level,
son, wins.
* * *
IN THE NOISES, like our beginning,
in the ravine,
where you fell to me,
I wind it up again, the
musical box—you
know: the invisible,
the
inaudible one.
* * *
LYON, LES ARCHERS
The iron spike, reared,
in the brickniche:
the co-millennium
instranges itself, unconquerable,
follows
your driving eyes,
now,
with glances cast here by dice
you wake, who is beside you,
she becomes heavier,
heavier,
you too, with all
the instrangedness in you,
instrange yourself,
deeper,
the One
string
tenses its pain between you,
the missing target
radiates, bow.
* * *
THE HEADS, monstrous, the city,
they are building,
behind happiness.
If once more you were my pain, faithful to you,
and a lip came by, this side, at the
place, where I reach out of myself,
I would bring you through
this street
up front.
* * *
WHERE AM I
today?
The dangers, all,
with their appliance,
hickishly gamey,
pitchfork-high
the heavensfallow hoisted,
the losses, chalkmouthed—you
upright mouths, you tables!—
in the disangled town,
harnessed to glimmerhackneys,
—goldtrace, counterheaved
goldtrace!—,
the bridges, overjoyed by the stream,
love, up there in the branch,
niggling at the coming-escaping,
the Great Light,
elevated to a spark,
on the right of the rings
and all gain.
* * *
THE LONG DISCOVERED
whisper letterwords to each other,
whisper the word without leaf, the peeked-around,
the size of your taler,
hear also
my strong
You-
know-how,
the high hither, the embrace
is with us, without end,
on the staircase
to the harbor,
the goose step falters,
Odessitka.
* * *
ALL YOUR SEALS BROKEN OPEN? NEVER.
Go, cedarize it
too, the letter-
skinned, eleven-
hoofed guile:
so that the wave, honey-
distant, milk-
close, when
courage moves it to complaint,
complaint to courage, again,
so that it not also
mirror the electron-
idiot, who processes
dates for
portentous
apes.
* * *
II
SLEEPMORSELS, wedges,
driven into the nowhere:
we remain equal to ourselves,
the turned-
about roundstar
agrees with us.
* * *
TRUTH, roped to
the relinquished dreamrelics,
comes as a child
over the ridge.
The crutch in the valley,
whirred about by earthclods,
by gravel, by
eyeseed,
leafs through the high-
up flowering No—in the
crown.
* * *
OUT OF THE NEAR
waterpits
graygreen shoveled
upward with unawakened hands:
the depth
gives up its growth, inaudible,
without resistance.
To recover that
too, before
the stoneday blows the men-
and animal-swarms empty, exactly as
the sevenflute, fronting the mouths, the
maws, demands it.
* * *
HATCHED
chitin-
suns.
The armored amphibians
wrap the blue prayercoats around themselves, the sand-
enthralled gull
sanctions it, the lurking
lampwick
goes into itself.
* * *
ETERNITIES, died
over and above you,
a letter touches
your still un-
wounded fingers,
the shining forehead
vaults hither
and beds itself in
odors, noises.
* * *
THE PERTY SAXIFRAGE
in the tile’s joint
of the empty-
prayed, hothouse-
like asylum,
a ceratose gaze
sleeps itself into the half-
open gate,
gangly,
a more than
major syllable comes walking,
an awakened
blindman’s staff points it
to the place behind
the whitehorsemanes.
* * *
THE BETWEEN-WHILES
hailed aid
grows,
the name-edifice
pauses,
the glacier milk carts
the fully grown through
the swimming target
of its unwavering
blazes.
* * *
THE SUCCESSFUL
mummy-leap across
the mountain.
The singular giant-
leaf of the paulownia,
that records it.
Unpicked, the large
toy-
worlds. No service whatsoever
in the constellation.
In the controltowers the hundred
silver hoofs hammer
the forbidden
light free.
* * *
ON THE RAINED-OVER SPOOR
silence’s little juggler sermon.
It is, as if you could hear,
as if I still loved you.
* * *
WHITESOUNDS, bundled,
ray-
passages
over the table
with the bottle post hither.
(It listens to itself, listens
to a sea, drinks it
too, unveils
the roadheavy
mouths.)
The One Secret
butts forever into the word.
(Who falls off that, rolls
under the leafless tree.)
All the
shadowclasps
on all the
shadowjoints,
audible-inaudible,
that announce themselves now.
* * *
THE DEVILISH
tonguejokes of night
lignify in your ear,
what the glances
beamed back,
jumps forward,
the wasted
chisel through the chalkravine before us,
the sea-ish lightswamp
barks up at us—
at you,
earthly-invisible
sanctuary.
* * *
THE DARK VACCINATION CANDIDATES, on
their unwavering orbit
around the wound,
needly,
beyond number and host,
running errands, indefatigable,
the glasshard
grinding sounds of writing,
on both seams
the afforested
hand-district (you half
sheen, alabaster),
in the wintery preserve
one pine absolves itself.
* * *
THE SECOND
nettle-message
to the
chugging
skull:
Sagged away,
the living
sky. Under
the yowling
nozzle,
amidst the eternal
blinker game,
bite yourself as word into the knowing,
starless
stalk.
* * *
THE EXCAVATED HEART,
wherein they install feeling.
Wholesale homeland pre-
fabricated parts.
Milksister
shovel.
* * *
THE INDUSTRIOUS
mineral resources, homey,
the heated syncope,
The not-to-be-deciphered
jubilee,
The completely glassed-in
spider-altars in the all-
overtowering low building,
the intermediate sounds
(even yet?),
the shadowpalavers,
the anxieties, icetrue,
flightclear,
the baroquely cloaked,
language-swallowing showerroom,
semantically floodlit,
the uninscribed wall
of a standing-cell:
here
live yourself
straightthrough, without clock.
* * *
THE COLLIDING temples,
naked, in the mask-rental:
behind the world
unbidden hope casts
out the towropes.
On the sea-ish woundborders lands
the breathing number.
* * *
IN-HEAVENED in plague-
shrouds. At
the disnighted
place.
The eyeblinkreflexes during
the luxuriant
dreamlevel
null.
* * *
WHEN I DON’T KNOW, DON’T KNOW,
without you, without you, without a You,
they all come,
the
freebeheaded, who
lifelong brainlessly sang
of the tribe
of the You-less:
Ashrei,
a word without meaning,
trans-Tibetan,
injected into the
Jewess
Pallas
Athena’s
helmeted ovaries,
and when he,
he,
fetally,
harps Carpathian nono,
then the Allemande
bobbins her lace for
the vomiting im-
mortal
song.
* * *
ACCLIMATIZED-DISCLIMATIZED,
adisclimatized,
the obedient darkness: three
bloodhours behind the
gaze-spring,
the coldlight-ocellae, s-
mothered by blinding,
the thirteen-
carat Nothing:
over you, with
the luckskin,
it folds itself
during
the ascent.
* * *
GIANT,
pathless, tree-
die-cast
hand-
scape,
quincunx.
The branches, nerve-piloted,
fall upon
the already
reddened harsh shadows,
a snakebite before
rose-
rise.
* * *
NEIGHED TOMBPRAYERS,
bloodhoofs paw
the thoughtbouquets together,
an ash-hooray
turns over the vocal parts,
hangs the irradiated topazes
high up in space,
the storm-compulsary
corpse bags
line up,
in the funeral procession
the kingdom of
Bohemia grins
irresistably.
* * *
THE ETERNITIES HONKYTONK
in the bent beam,
a greeting goes wild, twixt two,
the darkblood
muscle, it too
concealing itself,
encapsulates the name it carried along,
and reproduces itself
through budding.
* * *
TRASHSWALLOWER-CHOIRS, silvery:
Miliary fever
runs and runs around the pit-tomb,
whoever
thinks that December, a
gaze will wet his
talking forehead.
* * *
III
DEDEVILED INSTANT.
All winds.
The powers, sobered,
sow the lungstitch shut.
The blood collapses back upon itself.
In Bocklemünd, across the one in front,
the lightscript,
but also across you,
deeper confrère letter,
eternity-hither the
hammershine hurries.
* * *
SHELLS inside Finitude, stretchable,
in each
another figure grows itself fast
A thousand
is not even yet One.
Each arrow you loose
is accompanied by the sent-along target
into the unerringly-secret
tumult.
* * *
LOVE, straitjacket-pretty,
bears in on the pair of cranes.
Who, given that he drives through the void,
does the disbreathed here
bring across into one of the worlds?
* * *
YOU WERE my death:
you I could hold on to,
while all fell from me.
* * *
TO THE RIGHT—who? Shedeath.
And you, to the left, you?
The travel-sickles at the outer-
heavenly place
mime themselves whitegray
into moonswallows,
into starswifts.
I dive over there
and pour an urnfull
down, into,
you.
* * *
THE DISMANTLED TABOOS,
and the bordercrisscrossing between them,
worldwet, on a
meaning chase, on a
meaning
flight.
* * *
RAGE-PILGRIM RAIDS across
a sea-ish Outside and Inside,
Conquista
in the narrowest
bottom heart-
vitals.
(Nobody discolors what now streams.)
The salt of a co-
tear here
submerged
struggles up
the light
logbooktowers.
Soon
it flashes at us.
* * *
SILENCE, old hag, ride me through the rapids.
Lids’ fires, light up the way.
* * *
THE ONE self-
starred
night.
Threathed through by ashes,
hour-hither hour-yonder,
by the lidshadows of shut-
down eyes,
ground down
to arrowthin
souls,
silenced in conversation
with airalgae-bearded
crawling quivers.
A fulfilled
lightconch drives
through a conscience.
* * *
OVER MULLED AND TOILED WINE, necronymic
long before time,
I muster the glassworld—and not it alone—
for inspection
and roll myself into a stiff sail, mast-strong,
the ends deep in an anchor’s hollow tooth,
and get myself a navel, between the middles,
made of, below fat stars
in the wrinkled flood
icing them in,
redwhored