Quotes from Paul Celan

The sea, tasted, drunk away, dreamed away. An hour soul-eclipsed. The next, an autumn light, offered up to a blind feeling which came that way. Others, many, with no place but their own heavy centres: glimpsed and avoided. Foundlings, stars, black, full of language: named after an oath which silence annulled.

spills of mire I swallowed inside the tower

I know, I know and you know, we knew, we did not know, we were there, after all, and not there and at times when only the void stood between us we got all the way to each other.

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")

EINMAL, da hörte ich ihn da wusch er de Welt, ungesehn, nactlang, wirklich. Eins und Unendlich, Vernichtet, Ichten. Licht war. Rettung.

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.

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.

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends wir trinken und trinken

There is nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

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

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

The Years from You to Me" 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 mirror and faster pass food to the other: the night is the night, it begins with the morning, beside you it lays me down.

Erst wenn ich dich als Schatten berühre, glaubst du mir meinen Mund, der klettert mit Spät- sinnigem droben in Zeithöfen umher, du stößt zur Heerschar der Zweitverwerter unter den Engeln, Schweigewütiges sternt.

A poem, being an instance of language, hence essentially dialogue, may be a letter in a bottle thrown out to sea… . In this way, too, poems are en route… . Toward what? Toward something open, inhabitable, an approachable you, perhaps, an approachable reality.

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

Unreadability of this world. All doubles. The strong clocks back the fissure-hour, hoarsely. You, wedged into your deepest, climb out of yourself for ever. — Paul Celan, "Unreadability," Paul Celan: Selections . (University of California Press, March 14th 2005)

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.

The world is gone, I have to carry you.

Once, I did hear him, he did wash the world, unseen, nightlong, real. One and unending, annihilated, I'ed. Light was. Salvation

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech.

You are light: you will sleep through my Spring till it's over. I am lighter: in front of strangers I sing.

I am not sure the language I write in is spoken here, or anywhere.

BEFORE YOUR LATE FACE, a loner wandering between nights that change me too, something came to stand, which was with us once already, un- touched by thoughts.