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Breathturn into Timestead

Page 16

by Paul Celan


  * * *

  YOU OUTLIER

  beyond yourself,

  out beyond you

  lies your fate,

  white-eyed, escaped from

  a dream, something joins it,

  that helps

  with the tongueuprooting,

  even at noon, outside.

  * * *

  The silkbedecked Nowhere

  devotes its duration to the beam,

  I can see you

  here.

  To be received by you, and leave—

  Under the sandhood steers

  your unmonitered sleeping

  brain

  the unrealizable, single

  oceanic

  day,

  come, I brighten,

  come, I give you

  to me and to you too,

  overbred one,

  heavy one.

  * * *

  The vineyardwall assailed

  by eternity jingles,

  the vines

  mutiny,

  jingles too

  the marrow brain, at

  heartswelter, in

  the realer housing,

  the five grains distributed

  over the four seas,

  dive in.

  * * *

  Only when I touch

  you as shadow

  do you believe me my

  mouth,

  that one clambers

  with late-

  meanings up there

  in the timehalos,

  you happen upon the host

  of secondusers among

  the angels,

  the mutefurious

  stars.

  * * *

  IN THE REMOTEST

  connotation, at the foot of the paralyzed

  Amen-stairs:

  the phase Being, plundered

  bare,

  nearby, in the gutter,

  sayings still

  noodle,

  dreamfiberreinforced the profile

  of the sleepexcretion,

  at its single

  heartactive temple

  ice forms,

  no book opens itself,

  the Übernothing has

  joined up with me,

  it gives up its fight,

  in the ice,

  we are ready

  to exchange the most deadly in us,

  the thorn that gave the freesign

  rises through the cradles,

  behind the punch clock delusionsolid time

  gives itself away.

  * * *

  INSERTED INTO

  the emerald-trajectory,

  larvaelag, starlag, with all

  keels

  I search for you,

  unground.

  * * *

  All the sleepfigures, crystalline,

  that you adopted

  in the speechshadow,

  them

  I supply with my blood,

  the imagelines, they

  I should salvage

  in the slitveins

  of my insight—,

  my grief, I see now,

  defects to you.

  * * *

  Two sightbulges, two

  scarseams,

  here too, straight across

  the face,

  a light, retrieved from

  your first brands, a long

  time outside,

  slips into the

  glimpsed.

  * * *

  BEFORE MY

  sheet lightning knee

  the hand comes to stand,

  that you

  passed over your eye,

  a jingling

  gathers certainty

  in the circle I drew

  around us two,

  sometimes, of course,

  heaven dies

  in advance of our

  shards.

  * * *

  YOU THROW GOLD after me,

  drowning:

  perhaps a fish

  can be bribed.

  Give me, death,

  my pride.

  * * *

  The whisperhouse,

  open on leapday,

  handed on

  on jute, surface-

  deep,

  it naturalizes

  the fricatives,

  the lallation-stage

  is taken care of

  by the lip-

  pegs,

  —does the

  other snap in,

  on time?—

  this, yes this

  glacierscreaming

  of your hands,

  the network of the dead

  helps to carry the firnice,

  the moon,

  poles reversed,

  rejects you, second

  earth,

  at the restheaven, deathproud, the

  starthrong

  takes the hurdle.

  * * *

  LITTLE NIGHT: when you

  take me in, take me in,

  take me up,

  three woe-inches above

  the ground:

  all the sand-made dyingcoats,

  all the helpnots

  everything, that still

  laughs

  with the tongue—

  * * *

  TO HUDDLE AGAINST

  the instabilities:

  two fingers

  snap in the abyss, in the

  rough books

  world roars up, it is

  up to you.

  * * *

  I FOOL AROUND with my night,

  we hijack

  all

  that broke loose here,

  you, load your

  darkness too on

  half my driving

  eyes,

  it too shall hear it,

  from everywhere,

  the irrefutable echo

  of every opacity.

  * * *

  YOUR CLOCKFACE, over-

  layered with

  bluefires,

  gives away its numbers,

  my

  provenance

  looked around, it goes

  into you, the co-

  joined

  crystals

  bawl.

  * * *

  I PILOT YOU behind the world,

  there you are at home, unflinching,

  cheerfully

  the starlings survey death,

  the canebreak dismisses the stone, you have

  all

  you need for tonight.

  * * *

  MY

  soul, youward creasebent,

  hears you

  a-thundering,

  in your neck hollows my

  star learns how one sags away

  and becomes true,

  I finger it forth again—

  come, confer with it,

  this very day.

  * * *

  A STAR

  listens to a light,

  an hour repudiates

  an hour,

  heartheavy

  azure rolls

  over you,

  your bloody

  saliva

  delights

  an obsessed dustmote,

  a motherstump

  leads an earlyface

  through a pain,

  its god,

  mowing, paces off the imagefront,

  on the ridges

  of the upper

  cradle.

  * * *

  LITTLE ROOTDREAMINGS that keep me here,

  bloodwashedout,

  no longer visible for anyone,

  death’s possession,

  you, camber a forehead

  that a speech may go, of earth,

  of fervor, of

  eyenesses, here

  too, where you read me off the blinddial,

  here

  too,

  where you revoke me


  so thoroughly.

  * * *

  II

  ALMONDING YOU, who only halfspoke,

  yet was trembled from the seed on up,

  you

  I let wait,

  you.

  And was

  not yet

  uneyed,

  as yet unthorned in the song’s

  constellation, the song that begins:

  Hachnisini.

  * * *

  IT STOOD

  on your lip: the figsplinter

  it stood

  around us: Jerusalem

  it stood

  above the Daneship:

  the bright pinescent, we thanked it,

  I stood

  in you.

  * * *

  THE SWELTER

  adds us up

  in the ass’s bray before

  Absalom’s tomb, here too,

  Gethsemane, over there,

  bypassed, whom

  does it bury?

  At the nearest gate nothing opens,

  above you, open one, I carry you toward me.

  * * *

  WE WHO LIKE THE SEA OATS GUARD,

  in Neve Avivim,

  the unkissed

  stone of a complaint

  swells up,

  before fulfillment,

  it palpates our mouths,

  it crosses

  over to us,

  alloyed to us

  in its Whiteness,

  we hand ourselves on:

  to you and to me,

  night, be careful, the sand-

  commanded

  is strict

  with us two.

  * * *

  A RING, FOR BOWDRAWING,

  loosed after the wordswarm

  that founders behind the world,

  with the starlings,

  arrowy one, when you whir toward me,

  I know from where,

  I forget from where.

  * * *

  THE RADIANCE, yes, the one that

  Abu Tor

  saw riding toward us, when we

  orphaned into each other, for life,

  not only up from the wrists —:

  a goldbuoy, from

  temple-depths,

  surveyed the danger that

  slyly underlay us.

  * * *

  YOU, NITID

  daughtertumor

  of a cosmic glare,

  seized

  by supracelestial search troops

  shunted

  into the seeing, god-

  waiving

  starheap Blue,

  you turn gamy

  before our

  hungry, immovable

  pores,

  a co-sun, twixt

  two brightshots

  abyss.

  * * *

  COME, lay out the world with yourself,

  come, let me fill you all up with

  all that’s mine,

  one with you I am,

  to capture us,

  even now.

  * * *

  A BOOTFUL of brain

  set out in the rain:

  there will be a going, a great one,

  far across the borders

  they draw for us.

  * * *

  THE TRUMPET’S PART

  deep in the glowing

  Empty-text,

  at torch’s level,

  in the timehole:

  listen your way in

  with the mouth.

  * * *

  THE POLES

  are in us,

  insurmountable

  while awake,

  we sleep across, to the Gate

  of Mercy,

  I lose you to you, that

  is my snowcomfort,

  say that Jerusalem is,

  say it, as if I was this

  your Whiteness

  as if you were

  mine,

  as if without us we could be we,

  I leaf you open, forever,

  you pray, you lay

  us free.

  * * *

  THE KINGSWAY behind the pretend-door,

  before it, deathed

  in by the counter-

  sign, the lionsign,

  the constellation, keel up,

  mired in,

  you, with the

  wound-fathoming

  eyelash.

  * * *

  THERE ALSO comes a meaning

  down the narrower cut,

  it is breached

  by the deadliest of our

  standing marks.

  * * *

  I DRINK WINE from two glasses

  and harrow

  the king’s caesura

  like that other

  does Pindar,

  God turns in the tuning fork

  as one of the small

  just ones,

  from the lottery drum falls

  our doit.

  * * *

  SOMETHING SHALL BE, later,

  that fills itself with you

  and lifts itself

  to a mouth

  Out of shattered

  madness

  I raise myself

  and watch my hand

  as it draws the one

  single

  circle

  * * *

  NOTHINGNESS, for the sake

  of our names

  —they gather us in—

  seals,

  the end believes us

  the beginning,

  before the

  masters en-

  silencing us,

  in the undifferentiated, attesting

  itself: the clammy

  brightness.

  * * *

  IN THE BELLSHAPE the

  believing-unbelieving

  souls gasp,

  star-nonsense

  propagates itself, even with my

  hand, in desert-sense en-

  duned by you,

  we got here

  long ago.

  * * *

  AS I carry the ringshadow

  you carry the ring,

  something, used to heaviness,

  strains itself

  lifting us,

  infinite

  de-ternalizing you.

  * * *

  STRANGENESS

  has netted us,

  transience reaches

  perplexedly through us,

  take my pulse, it too,

  into yourself,

  then we shall prevail

  against you, against me,

  something enclothes us

  in dayskin, in nightskin,

  for the game with the highest, epi-

  leptic seriousness.

  * * *

  ILLUMINATED, the seeds

  which I in you

  won swimming,

  rowed free,

  the names—they

  sail the straits,

  a blessing, up front,

  compacts into

  a weathersensing

  fist.

  * * *

  III

  SALVED AWAY, outside, in the stone-

  crop,

  by singing

  hands,

  half the scabious,

  thrifty,

  before the eardrum rupture,

  under the left

  foot

  a window—of

  earth?

  * * *

  PLACE CHANGE by the substances:

  you go to yourself, join up,

  by missing

  earthlight,

  I hear, we were

  a heavensgrowth,

  that remains to be shown, from

  above, along

  our roots,

  there’s two suns, you hear,

  two,

  not one—

  so what?

  * * *

  THE WORLD, worl
d,

  just in all its farts,

  I, I

  with you, you, shaved

  bald.

  * * *

  WHAT BITTERS

  herein?

  The great alonenesses

  dwarfing

  in the auditory cortex-hymn,

  blessedly

  the thumbscrews whisper in

  sanguine

  rack-torture-height,

  the determining

  pauses

  are granted

  access,

  in the counting chamber,

  rebellious,

  the rings worship

  the rest.

  * * *

  THE LOWERED

  godthumbs, in bark-

  shirt I haul in the

  lowest treecreepers, soon it will be

  today, forever, the

 

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