MadZiddi’s Reviews > Poems of Paul Celan > Status Update

Crystal

not on my lips look for your mouth,
not in front of the gate for the stranger,
not in the eye for the tear.
seven nights higher red makes for red,
seven hearts deeper the hand knocks on the gate,
seven roses later plashes the fountain.
Paul Celan

This Evening Also

more fully,
since snow fell even on this
sun-drifted, sun-drenched sea,
blossoms the ice in those baskets
you carry into town.
sand
you demand in return,
for the last
rose back at home
this evening also wants to be fed
out of the trickling hour.
Paul Celan

On My Right

On my Right – who? The Death-Woman.
And you, on my Left, you?
The Wandering-Sickles in extraheavenly Place
mime themselves grey-white
Moon-Swallows, together,
Star-Swifts,
I plunge there
and pour an Urnful
down onto you,
in you.
Paul Celan

Corona
Autunm 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,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

I Can Still See You

I can still see you: an Echo,
to be touched with FeelerWords, on the PartingRidge.
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.
Paul Celan

Flower

The stone.
The stone in the air, which I followed.
Your eye, as blind as the stone.
We were
hands,
we baled the darkness empty, we found
the word that ascended summer:
flower.
Flower - a blind man's word.
Your eye and mine:
they see
to water.
Growth.
Heart wall upon heart wall
adds petals to it.
One more word like this word, and the hammers
will swing over open ground.
Paul Celan

Another jewel
"I Hear

I hear, the Axe has flowered,
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."
Paul Celan