by Paul Celan
in the standpipe,
in the
standpipe.
* * *
SCATTERED PROPERTY, dust-
immediate.
Evening after evening
the messages, withdrawn from
the thoughts, drift in,
king-hard, night-hard,
into the hands of the grievance-
reeves:
from the break
of their life-
lines
the answer steps soundless:
the one eternal
drop of
gold.
* * *
THE LETTER READ FROM
the unwritten
pages,
the play-dead reflex’s
graysilver chain on it,
followed by three silver
beats.
You know: the leap
goes over you, always.
* * *
CUT THE PRAYERHAND
from
the air
with the eye-
scissors,
lop off its fingers
with your kiss:
What’s folded now happens
breathtakingly.
* * *
WHAT’S REQUIRED AS STARS
pours itself out,
your hands’ leafgreen shadow
gathers it in,
joyously I crunch
the coin-pithy
destiny.
* * *
I CAN STILL SEE YOU: an echo,
palpable with feel-
words, at the departure-
ridge.
Your face shies quietly,
when all at once
lamplike it lights up
inside me, at that place
where one most painfully says Never.
* * *
NOTHING BUT
single children
with faint, moory
mothersmells in the throat,
as trees—as black-
alders—elected,
scentless.
* * *
IN THE VOID
where the chitlins wind
around the brains-
blossom,
I threw myself toward stones,
they caught me
and crowned a round
with what I became.
* * *
THE LOAMY SACRIFICE DOWNPOURS,
circled by snails:
the image of the world,
carried heavenward
on a blackberry-leaf.
* * *
THE WILDHEART, dishoused
by the halfblind stab
in the lung,
disbreathed bubbles,
slowly, bloodunderwashed
the rarely promised
right
by-
life
configures itself.
* * *
IV
THE ETERNITIES went
for his face and beyond
it,
slowly a blaze put out
everything candled,
a green, not from here,
bedowned the chin of
the stone, which the orphans
buried and again
buried.
* * *
HEARTSOUND-FIBULAS, fenced in,
the pair of cranes
thinks itself before you,
aspectral
the light of your flower bestows itself,
the mantis’s trapleg
meets your over-
starry
Always.
* * *
GROWN WEARY
of each other,
roaming the margins,
come of age,
air
shovels itself up, water
too,
the fortune-teller, slain, she
sticks to the back of the
ace of hearts.
* * *
AN EXTRA DOLLOP OF NIGHT
is the share
of the from afar un-
damaged
captured
son.
A voice, amidst,
a-crows a face.
* * *
BEHIND FROSTSTREAKED BEETLES
the driving lighthappiness
bangs away,
a helpless
belly-grimace, friend,
lulls you to
sleep.
* * *
THE IRISHWOMAN, farewell-stained,
reads into your hand,
faster than
fast.
Her gaze’s blue marbles it,
loss and gain
in one:
you,
eye-fingery
distance.
* * *
THE LEFT-TO-ME
beamcrossed
One:
I am to puzzle it out,
while you, in sackcloth,
knit at the secretstocking.
* * *
REPUDIATED, need-
friendly,
distaff-legged
goddess:
Where you open up, in the kneeseat,
a knowing knife turns
on its axis,
in counterblood-
sense.
* * *
PRODUCTION-
HANGAR:
Glare-effects, at dusk,
—on you, imagine,
rested the healing hand under the flash-
ing sheen—
the guardian-word
in the overpressure-helmet,
a sign in the sentence
as fresh-air-machine.
Welding of the souls, shortlight.
In the blast bays: application of
artificial respiration to
the rhymy, beautiful
metal bellows.
* * *
IN THE VESICLE CHAMBER the
disbreathed wakes up, the
dangerous embryo,
at its crater-
end
sprouts the thirdeye
and spits
porphyry, also
pain.
* * *
MAGNETIC BLUE in mouth,
you gasp-gain pole after pole,
summered snow
throws itself on top,
soon the staggering starling hangs
in the double songswarm.
* * *
OUTFALL
combs your algae together,
lays them
around you.
What you still have
grows rampant, dammed in.
A white forehead-splinter goes
for you across the border.
* * *
THE MANTIS, again,
in the nape of the word
into which you had slipped—,
courage-inward
wanders meaning,
meaning-inward,
courage.
* * *
NO HALFWOOD anymore, here,
on the peakslopes,
no con-
versing
thyme.
Bordersnow and
—sounding
out, death-
saying the stakes and their
waypost-shadows—its
odor.
* * *
WEBBING between the words,
their timehalo—
a slough,
graycrestedness behind
the lightmane
meaning.
* * *
ADDRESSABLE
was the one-
winged soaring blackbird,
above the firewall, behind
Paris, up there,
in the
poem.
* * *
V
ORANIENSTRASSE 1
Tin grew in my hand
I didn’t know how
to help myself:
I didn’t want to mold,
it didn’t want to read me—
If now
Ossietzky’s last
drinking bowl
could be found,
I’d let the tin
learn from it,
and the host of pilgrims’
staffs
would ensilence, endure the hour.
* * *
WELL-
like
depthed into the enchanted,
with double-hipped
daydreams above,
ashlar-
rings
around each breath:
the chamber, where I left you, crouching,
to keep you,
the heart commands
the frost quietly fascinating us
at the separate
fronts,
you’ll be no flower
in urnfields
and me, the scriptbearer, no
ore, no arch takes me from the round
wood-mud-hut, no
angel.
* * *
WITH DREAMPROPULSION in orbit,
smolder-
singed,
two masks instead of one,
planetdust in the caved
eyes,
nightblind, dayblind,
worldblind,
the poppy head in you
lands somewhere,
besilences
an also-star,
the swimming mourning-domain
records a further shadow,
they all help you,
the heartstone pierces its fan,
no kind of
coolness,
they all help you,
you sail, smolder, and die down,
eyeswarms pass the narrows,
a blood clump swings into the orbit,
earthswarms encourage you,
the weather in outer space
begins to harvest.
* * *
FOR THE LARKSHADOW
laid fallow: the hidden
un-
hardened,
brought in: the experienced
stillness, a field, islandy,
in the fire,
after the
saturated hope,
after all
branched off fate:
the unrepentant, sung up
moss-victims, where you
search for me, blindly.
* * *
THE CUT-THROUGH dove-cordon,
the blasted
blossom-powers,
the suspected
found object, soul.
* * *
WAN-VOICED, ha-
rassed from the deep:
not a word, not a thing,
and of both the single name,
fall-true in you,
flight-true in you,
sore gain
of a world.
* * *
SOUNDDEAD SISTERSHELL,
let the dwarftones in,
the interrogated:
they mumble the greatheart together
and carry it piggyback to
every plight, every plight.
* * *
WEATHERSENSING HAND,
the moorpool shows it the way,
at night, through the fenwood.
Luminescence.
Who now works the bellows of the peatorgan, one-
legged, will
win a strongstream
loss.
* * *
IN TIME’S CORNER the
unveiled alder swears
under its breath,
on earth’s back, wide as a hand,
crouches the shot-through
lung,
at the field’s boundary the
winghour picks the snowcorn
from its own stone-eye,
lightbands set me afire,
crown-damages flicker.
* * *
ME TOO, who am born like you, no hand holds,
and none throws me a happiness into the hour, no different from you,
dipped like I into bull’s blood,
yet the numbers stand ready to light the tear,
leaping into the world
from our navel,
yet what came near us, singly,
enters the great syllable-script,
and the almond-testicle
thunders
and blooms.
* * *
THE BACKWARDSPOKEN
names, all,
the outmost, whinnied
into kinghood
before hoarfrost-mirrors,
beleaguered, besieged
by multiple births,
the merlon-cleft through it,
which means you, isolato,
also.
* * *
GRADUALLY CLOWNFACED
nothingmirrored,
the cosmetics, truth, frozen blue
in the angle-mouth,
frostpollen powder on the blank superskull,
round about the thin questionlock Black,
the brows, the brows: growing,
two giant feelercombs, two
—you, tall-streaked,
large-felt roughnight Alwaysalways—,
already swung away from the flake world,
not to, not fro.
* * *
ROADBLOCKBUOY LANGUAGE, roadblockbuoy song.
The steamroller thrumps
the second
Iliad
into the torn-up
pavement,
sandseamed
the old images
surprise themselves, into the gutter,
the warriors bleed to death oily
in silver puddles, on the road-
side, thudding,
Troy, dust-crowned,
gets it.
* * *
TO FLY UNDER
the flood, past
raised black
sacrifice stones,
unendingly earthed melancholy
in the
undercarriage shafts,
drunken flightwriters on
the yearning-slope,
future found objects, silvery,
in
the cockpit’s skullery,
sight tunnels, blown
into the speechfog,
self-sparkflowers
on all cables,
in the great, unextended
rimring your
hubbed shadow,
Saturn.
* * *
VI
DELUSIONSTALKER EYES: in you
end up the rest of the gazes.
A single
flood
swills up.
Soon you brighten
the rock to death, on which they
have
bet, against
themselves.
* * *
UNWIELDY MORROW,
I bite myself into you, I silence myself at you,
we resound,
alone,
the pastose
eternity-chimes drip away,
squawked through
by today’s
yesterday,
we drive,
grandly
does the last soundbell
take us in:
the accelerated heartstep
outside
in space,
near her, the earth-
axis.
* * *
NOTEPAPER-PAIN,
besnowed, oversnowed:
in the calendargap
he’s cradled, he’s cradled
by the newborn
nothing.
* * *
STREW OCHER into my eyes:
you no longer
live there,
save
on the tomb-
furnishings, save,
pace off the stonerows,
on your hands,<
br />
with their dream
paint over the
stamped-out
temporal bone’s squama,
at the
great
bifurcation re-
count yourself to the ocher
three times, nine times.
* * *
SWANDANGER,
grebe-
threat,
the icelashed with
kraken-
arms,
you, clawed
Yakut-
Pushkin:
Hei, Chebeldei, Chebeldei.
* * *
LEAPCENTURIES, leap-
seconds, leap-
births, novembering, leap-