Contents
- Your Hand
- Corona
- Death-Fugue
- Count The Almonds
- In Front of a Candle
- There Was Earth
- With Every Thought
- Ice, Eden
- Psalm
- Alchemical
- Mandorla
- Afternoon Of Circus And Citadel
- To Stand in the Shadow
- When You Lie
- On my Right
- I Can Still See You
- Illegibility
- Whorish Other-When
- I Hear
- With the Voice
- Stuttered-Over-Again World
- Only When
- Little Night
- The Trumpet-Part
- The Poles
- Index of First Lines
Your Hand
Your Hand full of Hours, you came to me – and I said:
‘Your Hair is not brown.’
So you lifted it, lightly, onto the Balance of Grief, it was
Heavier than I…
They come to you on Ships, make it their load, then place it
on sale in the Markets of Lust –
You smile at me from the Depths, I weep at you from the
Scale that’s still light.
I weep: Your hair is not brown, they offer Salt-Waves of the
Sea, and you give them spume.
You whisper: ‘They’re filling the World with me now, and for you
I’m still a Hollow-Way in the Heart!
You say: ‘Lay the Leaf-Work of Years beside you, it’s Time that you
came here and kissed me!
The Leaf-Work of Years is brown: your Hair is not brown.
Corona
From my Hand the Autumn eats its Leaf: we are Friends.
We shell Time from Nuts and teach it to walk:
Time returns to the Shell.
In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in Dream there is sleep,
the Mouth speaks true.
My eye bends down to the Sex of my Loved One:
we gaze at each other,
we speak a Darkness between us,
we love each other as Poppy and Memory,
we sleep like Wine in the Mussel,
like the Sea in the Blood-Beam of Moons.
We stand entwined at the Window, they look up at us from the
Street:
it is Time, that they knew!
It is Time, that the Stone condescended to flower,
that Unrest’s Heart beat.
It is Time that it became, Time.
It is Time.
Death-Fugue
Black Milk of Daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at noon and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we dig at a Grave in the Air there one lies unconfined
A Man lives in the House he plays with the Serpents he
writes
he writes while it falls dark over Germany your golden
Hair Margerete
he writes and steps from the House and they’re shining the Stars he
whistles his Jews up to dig at a Grave in the Earth
he commands us to strike up the Dance.
Black Milk of Daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and noon we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A Man lives in the House he plays with the Serpents he
writes
he writes while it falls dark over Germany your golden
Hair Margerete
Your ashen Hair Shulamith we dig at a Grave in the
Air there one lies unconfined
He cries dig the soil deeper you there you others sing out and
play
he grabs the Steel at his Belt he waves it his Eyes are
blue
dig your Spades deeper you there you others play on for
the Dance
Black Milk of Daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a Man lives in the House your golden hair Margarete
your ashen Hair Shulamith he plays with the Serpents
He cries play Death more sweetly Death is a Master from
Germany
He cries stroke the Strings more darkly you’ll rise like Smoke in
the Air
then a Grave you’ll have in the Clouds there one lies unconfined
Black Milk of Daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon Death is a Master from
Germany
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
Death is a Master from Germany his Eye is blue
he strikes you with leaden Bullets he strikes you true
a Man lives in the House your golden Hair Margarete
he sets his Dogs onto us and he grants us a Grave in the Air
he plays with the Serpents and dreams Death is a Master
from Germany
your golden Hair Margarete
your ashen Hair Shulamith
Count The Almonds
Count the Almonds,
count, what was bitter, watched for you,
count me in:
I sought your Eye, as it opened and no one announced
you,
I spun that hidden Thread,
on which the Dew, of your thought,
slid down to the Pitchers,
that a Speech, which no one’s Heart found, guarded.
Only there did you enter wholly the Name, that is yours,
stepping sure-footedly into yourself,
the Hammers swung free in the Bell-Cradle of Silences,
yours,
the Listened-For reached you,
the Dead put its arm round you too,
and the three of you walked through the Evening.
Make me bitter.
Count me among the Almonds.
In Front of a Candle
Of chased Gold, as
you told me to, Mother,
I shaped the Candlestick, out of which
she darkens for me in the midst of
fracturing hours,
your
Being-Dead’s Daughter.
Slender in Form,
a thin, almond-eyed Shadow,
Mouth and her Sex
danced round by Slumber-Beasts,
she drifts from the gaping Gold
she rises up,
to the Summit of Now.
With night-shrouded
Lips,
I speak the Blessing:
In the Name of the Three
who fight with each other, until
Heaven dips down into the Grave of Feeling,
in the Name of the Three, whose rings
gleam on my Finger, whenever
I loose the Hair of the Trees in the Abyss,
so that richer Floods rush down through the Deep –
in the Name of the first of the Three
who shrieked,
when called on to live, where his Word went before him,
in the name of the Second, who watched it and wept,
in the name of the Third, who piles white
stones in the middle –
I pronounce you free
of the Amen that overpowers us,
of the ice-filled Light at its rim,
there, where tower-high it enters the Sea,
there, where the grey one, the Dove
picks at the Names
this side and that side of Dying:
You stay, you stay, you stay,
a Dead Woman’s child,
sealed to the No of my yearning,
wedded to a Cleft in Time
to which the Mother-Word led me,
so that a single Spasm
would pass through the Hand
that now, and now, grasps at my Heart!
Note: Almond-eyed: Celan uses the synonym of bitter almonds for the Jews and referring to the custom of eating a bitter food at the Passover - Pesach - table, elsewhere says ‘Make me bitter, count me among the almonds.’ The Three: The triple goddess, personified perhaps as the three Graeae, who had only one eye between them, to see with, which they passed from hand to hand and struggled over, and also perhaps the Three Norns. In the myth, at the hero’s birth he is blessed by two of the Norns, but the third prophesies that he will die on the day that the candle beside him gutters. The oldest of the three seizes it, and warns the mother never to light it again until her son’s last day has come. Here the three are, equally, father, mother and son. And there are also the echoes of Ulysses and Aeneas conversing with the dead in the Underworld.
There Was Earth
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.
They dug and they heard nothing more;
did not grow wise, invented no Song,
thought up for themselves no Language.
They dug.
There came a Silence, there came a Storm,
There came every Ocean.
I dig, you dig, and it digs, the Worm,
and the Singing, there, says: They dig.
O someone, o none, o no one, o you:
Where did it lead to, that nowhere-leading?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you,
and on our finger awakens the Ring.
With Every Thought
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?
Everything woke, all things began.
Vast, a Sun came swimming by, bright
a Soul and a Soul engaged, clear,
masterfully made a silence for it
a path ahead.
Lightly
you opened your Lap, quiet
rose a Breath in the Aether,
and what became cloud, was it not,
was it not Form, and for us then,
was it not
as good as a Name?
Ice, Eden
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.
It sees, this Child of Sight.
It sees, it sees, we see,
I see you, you too see.
Ice will rise again before
This Hour shall cease to be.
Psalm
No-man kneads us again out of Earth and Loam,
no-man spirits our Dust.
No-man.
Praise to you, No-man.
For love of you
we will flower.
Moving
towards you.
A Nothing
we were, we are, we shall
be still, flowering:
the Nothing-, the
No-man’s-rose.
With
our Pistil soul-bright,
our Stamen heaven-torn,
our Corolla red
with the Violet-Word that we sang
over, O over
the thorn.
Note: The pistil is the female part of the flower consisting of ovary, style and stigma. The stamen is the male part containing pollen. The corolla is the whorl of leaves forming the inner envelope of the flower.
Alchemical
Silence, like Gold cooked in
charred
Hands.
Vast, grey,
near as all that is Lost
Sisterly-Shape:
All the Names, all the with-
Burnt up
Names. So much
Ash to be blessed. So much
Land gained
above
the light, so light
Soul-
Rings.
Vast. Grey. Clinker-
less.
You, then.
You with the pale
bitten-out bud,
You in the Wine-Flood.
(Did it not discharge
us too, this Hour?
Good,
Good, that your Word died away here.)
Silence, like Gold cooked, in
charred, charred
Hands.
Fingers, smoke-thin. Like Crowns, Air-Crowns
around – –
Vast. Grey. Track-
less.
Queen-
like.
Mandorla
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.
Jews’-Hair, you’ll not grow grey.
And your Eye – where does your Eye dwell?
Your Eye dwells on the Almond.
Your Eye, on Nothing it dwells.
It dwells on the King.
So it dwells and dwells.
Human-Hair, you’ll not grow grey.
Empty Almond, regally-blue.
Afternoon Of Circus And Citadel
In Brest, before the Fire-Hoops burning,
In the Tent, where Tigers sprang,
there I heard you, Finite, singing,
there I saw you, Mandelstam.
The Sky hung over the Roadstead,
the Gull, hung over the Crane.
The Finite sang there, the Constant –
you, the Gunboat, Baobab.
I hailed the Tricolor
with a Russian Word –
the Lost was Un-Lost,
the Heart Anchored there.
To Stand in the Shadow
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,
even without
Speech.
When You Lie
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.
His beak ticks the Hour for you
at every Mouth – at every
bell-stroke, with red-hot Rope, a Silent-
Millennium,
Un-Pulse and Pulse
mint each other to death,
the Dollars, the Cents,
rain hard through your Pores,
in
Second-Shapes
you fly there and bar
the Doors Yesterday and Tomorrow – phosphorescent,
Forever-Teeth,
buds the one, and buds the
other breast,
towards the Grasping, under
the Thrusts –: so thick,
so deeply
strewn
the starry
Crane-
Seed.
On my Right
On my Right – who? The Death-Woman.
And you, on my Left, you?
The Wandering-Sickles in extra-
heavenly Place
mime themselves grey-white
Moon-Swallows, together,
Star-Swifts,
I plunge there
and pour an Urnful
down onto you,
in you.
I Can Still See You
I can still see you: an Echo,
to be touched with Feeler-
Words, on the Parting-
Ridge.
Your face softly shies away,
when all at once there is
lamp-like brightness
in me, at the Point,
where most painfully one says Never.
Illegibility
Illegibility of this
World. All twice-over.
Robust Clocks
agree the Cracked-Hour,
hoarsely.
You, clamped in your Depths,
climb out of yourself
for ever.
World. All twice-over.
Whorish Other-When
Whorish other-when. And Eternity
blood-black en-babelled.
Mud-drowned
with your loamy Locks
my Faith.
Two Fingers, hand-far,
row towards a swampy
Vow.
World. All twice-over.
I Hear
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
our sole Refuge.
World. All twice-over.
With the Voice
With the voice of the Field-mouse
You squeak up,
a sharp
Clamp,
you bite through my Shirt into the Skin,
a Cloth,
you slither over my Mouth,
in the midst of my,
to you, Shadow, burdensome,
Speech.
Stuttered-Over-Again World
Stuttered-over-again World,
where I shall have been
a Guest, a Name,
sweated down from the Wall,
that a Wound licks up.
World. All twice-over.
Only When
Only when
as a Shade I touch you,
will you believe my
Mouth,
that climbs with Late-
Minded things up there
around the
Time-Courts,
you come to the Host
of the Twice-Using among
the Angels,
Silence-Enraged
Stars.
World. All twice-over.
Little Night
Little Night: when you
take me within, within,
up there,
three Pain-Inches above
the Floor:
all the Shroud-Coats of Sand,
all the Help-Nots,
all, that still
laughs
with the Tongue -
The Trumpet-Part
The Trumpet-Part
deep in the glowing
Text-Void
at Torch-Height,
in the Time-Hole:
listen in
with your Mouth.
World. All twice-over.
The Poles
The Poles
are within us,
insurmountable
while Awake,
we sleep across, to the Gate
of Mercy,
I lose you to you, that
is my Snow-Comfort,
say, that Jerusalem is,
say, as if I were this
your Whiteness,
as if you were
mine,
as if without us we could be we,
I open your leaves, forever,
you bless, you bed
us free.
Index of First Lines
- Your Hand full of Hours, you came to me – and I said:
- From my Hand the Autumn eats its Leaf: we are Friends.
- Black Milk of Daybreak we drink it at evening
- Count the Almonds,
- Of chased Gold, as
- There was Earth in them, and
- With every Thought I went
- There is a Land that’s Lost,
- No-man kneads us again out of Earth and Loam,
- Silence, like Gold cooked in
- In the Almond – what dwells in the Almond?
- In Brest, before the Fire-Hoops burning,
- To stand in the Shadow
- When you lie
- On my Right – who? The Death-Woman.
- I can still see you: an Echo,
- Illegibility of this
- Whorish other-when. And Eternity
- I hear, the Axe has flowered,
- With the voice of the Field-mouse
- Stuttered-over-again World,
- Only when
- Little Night: when you
- The Trumpet-Part
- The Poles
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved
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