Paul Celan (1920-1970) was born in Romania to Jewish parents. His parents were deported and eventually died in the Nazi labor camps, and he was interned for eighteen months before escaping to the Red Army. He ultimately settled in Paris in 1948 to study German philology and literature. He published seven books of poetry and numerous translations during his lifetime.
Christopher Mulrooney has written poems in Vanitas, Guernica, Marginalia, Beeswax and White Chimney.
Jim Doss is co-editor of Loch Raven Review. He was born and raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His work has appeared in Poetry East, Words-Myth, Poems Niedergasse, and other publications. He earns his living as a software engineer, and lives with his wife and three children in Maryland.
Spring 2008
Table of Contents - Vol. VI, No. 1
Poetry Interview Translations Fiction Book Reviews
I am alone, I set the ashen flower
in glass full of pure blackness. Sister mouth,
you speak one word, that lives on out the window,
and silent clambers, what I dreamed, aloft toward me.
I stand in bloom of this quite faded hour
and resin save for one belated songbird:
it wears a snowflake on a vivid rosy feather;
within its bill an ice grain, so comes through the summer.
translated from the German by Christopher Mulrooney
Threads of sun
over the grey-black wasteland.
A tree—
noble thoughts
escalate into a photographic sound recording;
there are still songs to be sung
beyond humans.
You were my death:
I could hold you
while everything else escaped me.
Black milk of dawn we drink it evenings
we drink it noons and mornings we drink it nights
we drink and drink
we dig a grave in the sky where we won’t be cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with snakes he writes
he writes to Germany when night falls over your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and steps from the house and the stars shine
he whistles his dogs to him
he whistles his Jews away orders a grave dug in the earth
he commands us to play something good for dancing
Black milk of dawn we drink you nights
we drink you mornings and noons we drink you evenings
we drink and drink
A man lives in the house he plays with snakes he writes
he writes to Germany when night falls over your golden hair Margarete
Your hair of ashes Shulamith we dig a grave in the sky where we won’t be cramped
He shouts you there shovel deeper in the earth you
others sing and play
he grabs for the iron swinging in his belt his eyes are blue
you there dig deeper with your spades you others on
with the dance
Black milk of dawn we drink you nights
we drink you noons and mornings we drink you evenings
we drink and drink
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
your hair of ashes Shulamith he plays with snakes
He shouts play death sweeter death must leave Germany a master
he shouts stroke the violins more sinisterly and you’ll climb like smoke in the sky
then you’ll have a grave in the sky that won’t be cramped
Black milk of dawn we drink you nights
we drink you noons death must leave Germany a master
we drink you evenings and mornings we drink and drink
death must leave Germany as a master his eyes are blue
he nails you with lead bullets he hits the mark
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he sics his dogs on us he gives us a grave
he plays with snakes and dreams death will leave Germany a master
your golden hair Margarete
your hair of ashes Shulamith
At the long tables of time
the tankards of God carouse.
They drink the eyes of seeing empty and the eyes of the blind,
the hearts of the ruling shadows,
the hollow cheek of evening.
They are the mightiest carousers:
they carry the empty and full alike to their mouths
and do not foam over like you or I.
Arinca, eyebright, the
drink from the well with the
cubed dice on top,
in the
cabin,
who in the book
— whose name was recorded
before mine? —
who in this book
writes a line of
hope, today,
on a thinker's
word
forthcoming
in the heart,
forest sward, unleveled,
orchids and orchids, individually,
crudeness, later, while traveling,
clear,
he who drives us, the man
who also listens,
the half-
trod log-
trails in the high moor,
dampness,
much.
Out of my hand autumn eats its leaves: we are friends.
We shell time from the nuts and teach it to run:
time returns back to the bowl.
In the mirror it is Sunday,
in dream one sleeps,
the mouth speaks the truth.
My eye descends to the sex of my love:
we look at each other,
we speak what is dark,
we love each other like poppy and memory,
we sleep like wind in the sea-shells,
like sea in the blood-red radiance of the moon.
We stand by the window, embracing, they look at us from the street:
It is time that they knew!
It is time that the stone takes the trouble to bloom,
that a heart beats for restlessness.
It is time that it becomes time.
It is time.
You should say to the eye of the strangers: keep the water.
You should seek those you know in the water in the eye of the strangers.
You should call them from the water: Ruth! Naomi! Miriam!
You should adorn them if you lie with strangers.
You should adorn them with the cloudy hair of the strangers.
You should say to Ruth and Miriam and Naomi:
See, I sleep with her.
You should adorn the stranger beside you most beautifully.
You adorn them with the pain of Ruth, of Miriam and Naomi.
You should say to the strangers:
See, I slept with them!
translated from the German by Jim Doss
© Christopher Mulrooney and Jim Doss
