Paul Celan November 23, 1920 — April 20, 1970
Born Paul Antschel in Romania, into a German-Jewish family, he was one of the major German language poets of post-World War II. His parents were killed during the Holocaust and Paul spent time in a concentration camp. His experiences during the war became strong forces in his poetry and use of language.
He committed suicide at the age of 49 in Paris, drowning in the Seine river.
Homecoming
Snowfall, denser and denser,
dove-coloured as yesterday,
snowfall, as if even now you were sleeping.
White, stacked into distance.
Above it, endless,
the sleigh track of the lost.
Below, hidden,
presses up
what so hurts the eyes,
hill upon hill,
invisible.
On each,
fetched home into its today,
an I slipped away into dumbness:
wooden, a post.
There: a feeling,
blown across by the ice wind
attaching its dove- its snow-
coloured cloth as a flag.
Corona
Out of my hand autumn eats its leaf: we are friends.
We shell time from the nuts and teach it to walk;
time goes back into its shell.
In the mirror it is Sunday,
in the dream there is sleeping,
the mouth speaks the truth.
My eye descends to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we whisper darkness to each other,
we love each other like poppy and memory,
we sleep like wine in the sea shells,
like the sea in the ray of blood of the moon.
We stand entwined in the window, they watch us from the street:
it is time the people knew.
It is time that the stone condescended to bloom,
that unrest inspired a heart to beat.
It is time that it became time.
It is time.
Translated by Michael Hamburger
O Little Root of a Dream
0 little root of a dream
you hold me here
undermined by blood,
no longer visible to anyone,
property of death.
Curve a face
that there may be speech, of earth,
of ardor, of
things with eyes, even
here, where you read me blind,
even
here,
where you
refute me,
to the letter.
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
still be, flowering:
the Nothing-, the
No-man’s-rose.
With
our pistil soul-bright,
our stamen heaven-torn,
our corolla red
with the violet word we sang
above, O above
Your Hand
Your hand full of hours, you came to me – and I said:
‘Your hair is not brown.’
You lifted it, lightly, onto the balance of grief,
it was heavier than I.
They come to you on ships, and make it their load,
then put it on sale in the markets of lust.
You smile at me from the deep.
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 by you, it’s time,
that you came here and kissed me.
The leaf-work of years is brown, your hair is not brown.
--Cat
