by Paul Celan
your body, Lord.
Pray, Lord,
Pray to us,
we are nigh.
Windskew we went on,
we went on, to bend ourselves
at hollow and hole.
To the trough we went, Lord.
It was blood, it was,
which you had spilt, Lord.
It glittered.
It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.
Eyes and mouth hang so open and empty, Lord.
We have drunk, Lord.
The blood and the image within the blood, Lord.
Pray, Lord.
We are nigh.
SPEECH-GRILLE
Eye-orb between the bars.
Ciliary lid
rows upwards,
releases a gaze.
Iris, swimmer, dreamless and dim:
the sky, heart-gray, must be near.
Skew, in the iron socket,
the smoldering splinter.
By the sense of light
you guess the soul.
(Were I like you. Were you like me.
Did we not stand
under one tradewind
We are strangers.)
The tiles. Upon them,
close together, the two
heart-gray pools:
two
mouthfuls of silence.
Matiere De Bretagne
Furze-light, yellow, the slopes
fester skywards, the thorn
woos the wound, a knell tolls
within, it is evening, the void
rolls its seas to devotion,
the blood-sail steers at you.
Arid, aground,
the bed behind you, sedge-choked
its hour, above,
at the star, the milky
narrows chatter in mud, stone-borer,
below, bushy, gapes into blueness, a shrub of
ephemeralness, lovely,
hails your memory.
(Did you know me,
hands? I followed
the forking road you showed me, my mouth
spit out its chippings, I walked, my time,
a wandering snow-wall, cast its shadow — did you know me?)
Hands, the thorn-
wooed wound, a knell,
hands, the void, its seas,
hands, in the furze-light, the
blood-sail
steers at you.
You
you teach
you teach your hands
you teach your hands you teach
you teach your hands
to sleep
STRETTO
Spent into
the ground
with unmistakable trace:
grass, written asunder. The stones, white,
with the shadows of the stalks:
Stop reading: look!
Stop looking: go!
Go, your hour
has no sisters, you are —
are at home. A wheel, slowly,
rolls by itself, the spokes
clamber,
clamber over the darkening field, night
needs no stars, nothing
is asking about you.
Nothing
asking about you -
The place, where they lay, it has
a name — it has
none. They didn't lie there. Something
lay between them. They
didn't see through it.
Didn't see, no,
spoke about
words. Nothing
woke up,
sleep
came over them.
Came, came. Nothing
asking -
It's me, me,
I lay between you, I was
open, was
audible, I ticked to you, your breath
obeyed,I
am still the one, you
still are sleeping.
Am still the one —
Years.
Years, years, a finger
feels down and up, feels
around:
where the seams are, feel them, here
it ripped wide apart, here
it grew back together — who
covered it up?
Covered it
up — who?
Came, came.
Came a word, came,
came through the night,
wanted to shine, wanted to shine.
Ashes.
Ashes, ashes.
Night.
Night-and-night. — To
the eye, go, to the moist.
To
the eye, go,
to the moist —
hurricanes,
hurricanes, from wherever,
particle drift, the other,
you
know the one, we
read it in the book, it was
meaning.
Was, was
meaning. How
did we grasp
each other — with
these
hands?
And it stood written that.
Where? We
did a silence over it,
venomstilled, huge,
a
green
silence, a sepal, a
thought of plant life hung from it -
green, yes,
hung, yes,
under spiteful
skies.
Of, yes,
plant life.
Yes.
Hurricanes, par-
ticle drift, some
time left, left,
to try it on the stone — it
was hospitable, it
didn't interrupt. How
good we had it:
gritty and stringy. Stalked,
dense;
clustery and raying; kidneyshaped,
flattish and
lumpy; loose, all
branching, it, it
didn't interrupt, it
spoke,
spoke gladly to dry eyes before it closed them.
Spoke, spoke.
Was, was.
We
did not give way, stood
in the midst,
pore structure, and
it came.
Came up to us, came
right through, stitched
invisibly, stitched
to the last membrane,
and
the world, a thousand crystal,
shot forth, shot forth.
Shot forth, shot forth.
Then-
nights, unmixed, circles,
green or blue, red
squares: the
world puts its innermost
into play with the new
hours. — Circles,
red or black, bright
squares, no
flight shadows,
no
measuring board, no
smoke soul rises and plays too.
Rises and
plays too -
In owl flight, near
leprosy turned to stone,
near
our fled hands, in
the latest rejection,
over the
target on
the ruinous wall:
visible, once
again: the
furrows, the
choirs, back then, the
psalms. Ho, ho
sanna.
So
temples still stand. A
star
still has its light.
Nothing,
nothing is lost.
Ho-
sanna.
In the owl flight, here,
the chatter, day gray,
of ground water traces.
(—day gray,
of
groundwater traces -
Spent
into the ground
with
the unmistakabl
e
trace:
grass.
Grass,
written asunder.)
from DIE NIEMANDSROSE/ THE NOONESROSE
There was earth in them, and they dug.
They dug and dug, so passed
their day away, their night. And they praised not God,
who, as they heard, wished all this,
who, as they heard, knew all this.
They dug and heard no more;
they became not wise, made up no song, devised no kind of tongue
for themselves. They dug.
There came a stillness, and there came a storm, there came the
oceans all. I dig, you dig, and so too digs the worm, and the
singing there means: They dig.
O one, O none, O nobody, you:
Where to go, with nowhere to go?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig unto you,
and a-finger awakens us the ring.
ZURICH, ZUM STORCHEN
for Nelly Sachs
Of too much was the talk, of
too little. Of you
and again-you, of
the dimming through brightness, of
Jewishness, of
your God.
Thereof.
The day of an Ascension, the cathedral stood
off there, came with something of gold over
the water.
Of your God was the talk, I spoke
against him, I
let the heart that I had
hope:
for
its highest, deathrattled, its
cavilling word —
Your eye looked at me, looked away,
your mouth
addressed the eye, I heard:
We
dont (really) know, you know(?),
we
dont (really) know,
what's
worth.
PSALM
Noone kneads us again from earth and loam,
noone evokes our dust.
Noone.
Praised be you, noone.
Because of you we wish
to bloom.
Against
you.
A nothing
were we, are we, will
we be, blossoming:
the nothing's-, the noonesrose.
With
its pistil soulbright,
its stamen heavencrazed,
its crown red
from the purpleword that we sang
over, o over
its thorn.
TUBINGEN, JANNER
Eyes con-
vinced to go blind.
Their — "a
riddle is pure
origin" —, their
remembrance of
swimming Holderlin-towers, gull-
blown.
Visits of drowned carpenters by
these
diving words:
If,
if a man,
if a man was born, today, with
the lightbeard of
the patriarchs: he could,
speaking of these
days, he
could
but babble and babble.
always, always
agagain.
("Pallaksch. Pallaksch.")
ALCHEMICAL
Silence, cooked like gold, in
carbonized
hands.
Great, gray,
close, like all that's lost,
sister figure:
All the Names, all the al-
names. So much
to be blessed ashes. So much
won land
above
the light, o so light
soul-
rings.
Great. Gray. Cinder-
less.
You. Back then.
You with the livid
bitten open bud.
You in the wine-flood.
(Isn't it true, us too
this clock released?
Good,
good, how your word died past here.)
Silence, cooked like gold, in
carbonized, carbonized
hands.
Finger, smoke-thin. Like crowns, aircrowns
around —
Great. Gray. Trace-
less.
King-
ly-
RADIX, MATRIX
Like one speaks to the stone, like
you,
to me from the abyss, from
a homeland hereward, dis-
sister, hereward
thrown one, you,
you pretime for me,
you me in the nothing of a night,
you in the but-night en-
countered one, you
but-you —:
Back when, when I was not there,
back when, when you
paced off the field, alone:
Who,
who was it, that
lineage, the murdered one, the one
standing black into the sky:
Rod and ball —?
(Root.
Root of Abraham. Root of Jesse. No one's
root — oh
ours.)
Yes,
as one speaks to the stone, as
you
with my hands thereto
and into nothingness grab, thus
is, what is here:
this receptacle
too gapes,
this
downward
is the one of the wild-
blooming crowns.
BLACKEARTH. black
earth you, times-
mother
Despair:
One from the hand and its
wound to you De-
livered shuts
your calyxes.
TO ONE WHO STOOD AT THE DOOR. One
evening:
to him
I let my word out —: to the
goitred I saw him trot, to the
half-
hearted, the
muddy booted footsoldier
born brother, the
blood-glutted
Gods-
handiwork, the
chittering little man.
Rabbi, I rasped, Rabbi
Loew:
From him
remove the word,
for him
write the living
nothingness at heart,
to him
extend your two
brokenfingers in grace-
bestowing judgment.
To him.
Throw eveningsdoor open too, Rabbi.
Rip the morningsdoor off, Ra—
MANDORLA
In the almond — what stands in the almond?
Nothing.
What stands in the almond is Nothing.
There it stands and stands.
In Nothing — what stands there? The King.
There the King stands, the King.
There he stands and stands.
Jew's curl, you'll not turn gray.
And your eye — what does your eye stand on?
On the almond your eye stands.
Your eye, on Nothing it stands.
Stands on the King, to him remains loyal, true.
So it stands and stands.
Human curl, you'll not turn gray.
Empty almond, royal-blue.
SIBERIAN
Bowprayers — you
didn't recite them along, they were,
you think so, yours.
The crow-swan hung
from the early asterism:
with corroded lid fissure
a face stood — even under this
shadow.
Small bell, left
lying in the
icewind
with your
white pebble in the mouth:
Stuck in my
> throat too, the millennium-
colored stone, the heartstone,
I too
develop verdigris on
my lip.
Over the rubble field here,
through the sedge sea today
she leads, our
bronze-road.
There I lie and talk to you
with skinned
finger.
THE SYLLABLE PAIN
It gave itself into Your hand:
a You, deathless,
at which all of I came to itself. Wordfree
voices drove around, empty forms, everything
entered them, mixed
and unmixed
and mixed
again.
And numbers too
were woven into the
uncountable. One and a thousand and what
before and after
was larger than itself, smaller, ripe-
ned and
back- and out-
transformed into
germinating Never.
The forgotten groped
the to-be-forgotten, continents, heartinents
swam,
sank and swam. Columbus,
fall
crocus in his sight, the mother-
flower,
murdered masts and sails. Everything left port,
free,
explorerish,
the windrose flowered and faded, ex-
foliated, a worldsea
bloomed a-heap and a-day, in the blacklight
of wild-lubber lines. In coffins,
urns, canopic jars
the little children
awoke : Jasper, Agate, Amethyst — peoples,
tribes and clans, a blind
Let there be
knotted itself in-