Paul Celan

sun-drifted, sun-drenched sea,blossoms the ice in those basketsyou carry into town.sandyou demand in return,for the lastrose back at homethis evening also wants to be fedout of the trickling hour.

Hands.Vast, grey,near as all that is LostSisterly-Shape:All the Names, all the with-Burnt upNames. So muchAsh to be blessed. So muchLand gainedabovethe light, so lightSoul-Rings.Vast. Grey. Clinker-less.You, then.You with the palebitten-out bud,You in the Wine-Flood.(Did it not dischargeus too, this Hour?Good,Good, that your Word died away here.)Silence, like Gold cooked, incharred, charredHands.Fingers, smoke-thin. Like Crowns, Air-Crownsaround…

became true: . . . yourhouse in Paris — becomethe alterpiece of your hands.Breathed through thrice,shone through thrice.……………….It’s turning dumb, turning deafbehind our eyes.I see the poison flowerin all manner of words and shapes.Go. Come.Love blots out its name: toyou it ascribes itself.translated by Michael Hamburger

For no-one and nothing to Stand.Unknown,for youalone.With all, that within finds Room,even withoutSpeech.

undermined by blood,no longer visible to anyone,property of death.Curve a facethat there may be speech, of earth,of ardor, ofthings with eyes, evenhere, where you read me blind,evenhere,where yourefute me,to the letter.translated by Heather McHugh and Nikolai Popov

Handled already, Lord,clawed and clawing as thoughthe body of each of us wereyour body, Lord.Pray, Lord,pray to us,we are near.Wind-awry we went there,went there to bendover hollow and ditch.To be watered we went there, Lord.It was blood, it waswhat you shed, Lord.It gleamed.It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.Our eyes and our mouths are…

I saw you, sister, stand in that effulgence.

The forest gave you a necklace of hands. So dead you walk the rope.To your hair a darker blue is imparted; I speak of love.Shells I speak and light clouds, and a boat buds in the rain.A little stallion gallops across the leafing fingers–Black the gate leaps open, I sing:How did we live here?(from Mohn…

Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome;it wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely:it talks as I do when I grant admittance to hearts.It knows a French song about love, I sang it in autumnwhen I stopped as a tourist in Lateland and wrote my lettersto…