Paul Celan
Twenty-Five Poems
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2008 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Afternoon Of Circus And Citadel
‘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.
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.
we drink it
at
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
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
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
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
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
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
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
Death is a Master from
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 Snerpents and dreams Death is a Master
from
your golden Hair Margarete
your ashen Hair Shulamith
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
World. All twice-over.
Robust Clocks
agree the Cracked-Hour,
hoarsely.
You, clamped in your Depths,
climb out of yourself
for ever.
blood-black en-babelled.
Mud-drowned
with your loamy Locks
my Faith.
Two Fingers, hand-far,
row towards a swampy
Vow.
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.
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.
where I shall have been
a Guest, a Name,
sweated down from the Wall,
that a Wound licks up.
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.
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 -
deep in the glowing
Text-V