Paul Celan

translated, from the German, by John Felstiner

The Lonely One

More than the dove, more than the mulberry
it's me that autumn loves. Gives me a veil.
"Take this for dreaming," says its stitchery.
And: "God's as near as the vulture's nail."

But I have held another cloth instead,
coarser than this, no stitchery or seam.
Touch it and snow falls in the bramble bed.
Wave it and you will hear the eagle scream.
		
								1944

In Memoriam Paul Eluard

Lay in his grave for the dead man the words
he spoke so as to live. 
Cushion his head among them,
let him feel 
the tongues of longing, 
the tongs.

Lay on the lids of the dead man the word
he denied to that one
who said Thou to him,
the word 
his heart's blood skipped past on
when a hand as bare as his own
strung up into trees of the future 
the one who said Thou to him.

Lay this word on his lids:
perhaps
in his still-blue eye a second,
stranger blue will enter,
and the one who said Thou to him 
will dream with him: We. 

								1952

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