Paul Celan , Translated
from German by Pierre Joris
Poems from Cycle II of
LIGHTDURESS
ONCE, death was much in demand,
you hid in me.
HATCHETSWARMS
above us,
conversations
with socket-axes in the lowland —
islandpasture, you,
with hope
fogging you
in.
PRECOGNITION bleeds
twice behind the curtain,
Cognizance
pearls
TWO AT BRANCUSI’S
If one among these stones
were to tell
what silences it:
here, nearby,
on this old man’s crutch-stick,
it would open, as a wound,
into which you’d have to dive,
lonely,
far from my scream, the already also
hewn, white one.
WHERE I forgot myself in you,
you became thought,
something
rushes through us both:
the first of the
world’s last
wings,
the hide
overgrows
my storm-riddled
mouth,
you
come not
to
you.
LONG AGO boarded mudskiff.
A but-
ton, come
off,
nitpicks every buttercup,
the hour, the toad,
unhinges its world.
If I gulped down the cartrut,
I’d be with it too.