Poems of Paul Celan

How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

And the too much of my speaking: heaped up round the little crystal dressed in the style of your silence.

DUMB AUTUMN SMELLS. The marguerite, unbroken, passed between home and chasm through your memory. A strange lostness was palpably present, almost you would have lived.

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night we drink and we drink it we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are flashing he whistles his pack out he whistles his Jews out in earth has them dig for a grave he commands us strike up for the dance Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink in the morning at noon we drink you at sundown we drink and we drink you A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you others sing now and play he grabs at the iron in his belt he waves it his eyes are blue jab deeper you lot with your spades you others play on for the dance Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at noon in the morning we drink you at sundown we drink and we drink you A man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master from Germany he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air then a grave you will 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 sundown and in the morning we drink and we drink you death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith ("Death Fugue")

What times are these when a conversation is almost a crime because it includes so much made explicit?

I CAN STILL SEE YOU: an echo that can be groped towards with antenna words, on the ridge of parting. Your face quietly shies when suddenly there is lamplike brightness inside me, just at the point where most painfully one says, never.

Your hair waves once more when I weep. With the blue of your eyes you lay the table of love: a bed between summer and autumn. We drink what somebody brewed, neither I nor you nor a third: we lap up some empty and last thing. We watch ourselves in the deep sea’s mirrors and faster pass food to the other: the night is the night, it begins with the morning, beside you it lays me down. ("The Years From You To Me")

A Leaf, Treeless A LEAF, treeless for Bertolt Brecht: What times are these when a coversation is almost a crime because it includes so much made explicit?

I Hear that the Axe has Flowered I hear that the axe has flowered, I hear that the place can't be named, I hear that the bread which looks at him heals the hanged man, the bread baked for him by his wife, I hear that they call life our only refuge.

You Were My Death You were my death: you I could hold when all fell away from me.

The poem is lonely. It is lonely and enroute. — from “The Meridian

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.

A palavra de ir-a-pique que lemos. Os anos, as palavras desde então. Ainda o somos. Sabes, o espaço é infinito, sabes, não precisas de voar, sabes, o que em teu olho se gravou aprofunda-nos a profundeza.

Una palabra — vos sabés: un cadáver. Vamos a lavarla vamos a peinarla, vamos a volver su ojo hacia el cielo.

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends. From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk: then time returns to the shell. In the mirror it’s Sunday, September 17, 2017 in dream there is room for sleeping, our mouths speak the truth. My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one: we look at each other, we exchange dark words, we love each other like poppy and recollection, we sleep like wine in the conches, like the sea in the moon’s blood ray. We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street: it is time they knew! It is time the stone made an effort to flower, time unrest had a beating heart. It is time it were time. It is time. ("Corona")