The Straitening Poem by Paul Celan

*

Driven into the
terrain
with the unmistakable track:

grass, written asunder. The stones, white,
with the shadows of grassblades:
Do not read any more - look!
Do not look any more - go!

Go, your hour
has no sisters, you are -
are at home. A wheel, slow,
rolls out of itself, the spokes
climb,
climb on a blackish field, the night
needs no stars, nowhere
does anyone ask after you.

*
Nowhere
does anyone ask after you -

The place where they lay, it has
a name - it has
none. They did not lie there. Something
lay between them. They
did not see through it.

Did not see, no,
spoke of
words. None
awoke,
sleep
came over them.

*
Came, came. Nowhere
anyone asks -

It is I, I,
I lay between you, I was
open, was
audible, ticked at you, your breathing
obeyed, it is
I still, but then
you are asleep.

*
It is I still -

years,
years, years, a finger
feels down and up, feels
around:
seams, palpable, here
it is split wide open, here
it grew together again - who
covered it up?

*
Covered it
up - who?

Came, came.
Came a word, came,
came through the night,
wanted to shine, wanted to shine.

Ash.
Ash, ash.
Night.
Night-and-night. - Go
to the eye, the moist one.

*
Go
to the eye,
the moist one -

Gales.
Gales, from the beginning of time,
whirl of particles, the other,
you
know it, though, we
read it in the book, was
opinion.

Was, was
opinion. How
did we touch
each other - each other with
these
hands?

There was written too, that.
Where? We
put a silence over it,
stilled with poison, great,
a
green
silence, a sepal, an
idea of vegetation attached to it -
green, yes,
attached, yes,
under a crafty
sky.

Of, yes,
vegetation.

Yes.
Gales, whirl of part-
icles, there was
time left, time
to try it out with the stone - it
was hospitable, it
did not cut in. How
lucky we were:

Grainy,
grainy and stringy. Stalky,
dense:
grapy and radiant; kidneyish,
flattish and
lumpy; loose, tang-
led -; he, it
did not cut in, it
spoke,
willingly spoke to dry eyes, before closing them.

Spoke, spoke.
Was, was.

We
would not let go, stood
in the midst, a
porous edifice, and
it came.

Came at us, came
through us, patched
invisibly, patched
away at the last membrane
and
the world, a millicrystal,
shot up, shot up.

*
Shot up, shot up.
Then -

Nights, demixed. Circles,
green or blue, scarlet
squares: the
world puts its inmost reserves
into the game with the new
hours. - Circles,
red or black, bright
squares, no
flight shadow,
no
measuring table, no
smoke soul ascends or joins in.

*
Ascends and
joins in -

At owl's flight, near
the petrified scabs,
near
our fled hands, in
the latest rejection,
above
the rifle-range near
the buried wall:

visible, once
more: the
grooves, the

choirs, at that time, the
psalms. Ho, ho-
sannah.

So
there are temples yet. A
star
probably still has light.
Nothing,
nothing is lost.

Ho-
sannah.

At owl's flight, here,
the conversations, day-grey,
of the water-level traces.

*
(--day-grey,
of
the water-level traces -
Driven into the
terrain
with
the unmistakable
track:

Grass,
grass,
written asunder.)