Read Breathturn into Timestead Online
Authors: Paul Celan
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soul, youward creasebent,
hears you
a-thundering,
in your neck hollows my
star learns how one sags away
and becomes true,
I finger it forth againâ
come, confer with it,
this very day.
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listens to a light,
an hour repudiates
an hour,
heartheavy
azure rolls
over you,
your bloody
saliva
delights
an obsessed dustmote,
a motherstump
leads an earlyface
through a pain,
its god,
mowing, paces off the imagefront,
on the ridges
of the upper
cradle.
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L
ITTLE ROOTDREAMINGS
that keep me here,
bloodwashedout,
no longer visible for anyone,
death's possession,
you, camber a forehead
that a speech may go, of earth,
of fervor, of
eyenesses, here
too, where you read me off the blinddial,
here
too,
where you revoke me
so thoroughly.
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A
LMONDING
YOU
, who only halfspoke,
yet was trembled from the seed on up,
you
I let wait,
you.
And was
not yet
uneyed,
as yet unthorned in the song's
constellation, the song that begins:
Hachnisini.
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on your lip: the figsplinter
it stood
around us: Jerusalem
it stood
above the Daneship:
the bright pinescent, we thanked it,
I stood
in you.
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adds us up
in the ass's bray before
Absalom's tomb, here too,
Gethsemane, over there,
bypassed, whom
does it bury?
At the nearest gate nothing opens,
above you, open one, I carry you toward me.
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W
E WHO LIKE THE SEA OATS GUARD
,
in Neve Avivim,
the unkissed
stone of a complaint
swells up,
before fulfillment,
it palpates our mouths,
it crosses
over to us,
alloyed to us
in its Whiteness,
we hand ourselves on:
to you and to me,
night, be careful, the sand-
commanded
is strict
with us two.
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loosed after the wordswarm
that founders behind the world,
with the starlings,
arrowy one, when you whir toward me,
I know from where,
I forget from where.
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T
HE RADIANCE
, yes, the one that
Abu Tor
saw riding toward us, when we
orphaned into each other, for life,
not only up from the wrists â:
a goldbuoy, from
temple-depths,
surveyed the danger that
slyly underlay us.
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daughtertumor
of a cosmic glare,
seized
by supracelestial search troops
shunted
into the seeing, god-
waiving
starheap Blue,
you turn gamy
before our
hungry, immovable
pores,
a co-sun, twixt
two brightshots
abyss.
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C
OME
, lay out the world with yourself,
come, let me fill you all up with
all that's mine,
one with you I am,
to capture us,
even now.
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A
BOOTFUL
of brain
set out in the rain:
there will be a going, a great one,
far across the borders
they draw for us.
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deep in the glowing
Empty-text,
at torch's level,
in the timehole:
listen your way in
with the mouth.
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are in us,
insurmountable
while awake,
we sleep across, to the Gate
of Mercy,
I lose you to you, that
is my snowcomfort,
say that Jerusalem
is
,
say it, as if I was this
your Whiteness
as if you were
mine,
as if without us we could be we,
I leaf you open, forever,
you pray, you lay
us free.
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T
HE KINGSWAY
behind the pretend-door,
before it, deathed
in by the counter-
sign, the lionsign,
the constellation, keel up,
mired in,
you, with the
wound-fathoming
eyelash.
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T
HERE ALSO
comes a meaning
down the narrower cut,
it is breached
by the deadliest of our
standing marks.
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I
DRINK WINE
from two glasses
and harrow
the king's caesura
like that other
does Pindar,
God turns in the tuning fork
as one of the small
just ones,
from the lottery drum falls
our doit.
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S
OMETHING SHALL BE
, later,
that fills itself with you
and lifts itself
to a mouth
Out of shattered
madness
I raise myself
and watch my hand
as it draws the one
single
circle
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N
OTHINGNESS
, for the sake
of our names
âthey gather us inâ
seals,
the end believes us
the beginning,
before the
masters en-
silencing us,
in the undifferentiated, attesting
itself: the clammy
brightness.
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believing-unbelieving
souls gasp,
star-nonsense
propagates itself, even with my
hand, in desert-sense en-
duned by you,
we got here
long ago.
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A
S
I
carry the ringshadow
you carry the ring,
something, used to heaviness,
strains itself
lifting us,
infinite
de-ternalizing you.
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has netted us,
transience reaches
perplexedly through us,
take my pulse, it too,
into yourself,
then we shall prevail
against you, against me,
something enclothes us
in dayskin, in nightskin,
for the game with the highest, epi-
leptic seriousness.
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I
LLUMINATED
, the seeds
which I in you
won swimming,
rowed free,
the namesâthey
sail the straits,
a blessing, up front,
compacts into
a weathersensing
fist.
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S
ALVED AWAY
, outside, in the stone-
crop,
by singing
hands,
half the scabious,
thrifty,
before the eardrum rupture,
under the left
foot
a windowâof
earth?
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P
LACE CHANGE
by the substances:
you go to yourself, join up,
by missing
earthlight,
I hear, we were
a heavensgrowth,
that remains to be shown, from
above, along
our roots,
there's two suns, you hear,
two,
not oneâ
so what?
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T
HE WORLD
, world,
just in all its farts,
I, I
with you, you, shaved
bald.
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herein?
The great alonenesses
dwarfing
in the auditory cortex-hymn,
blessedly
the thumbscrews whisper in
sanguine
rack-torture-height,
the determining
pauses
are granted
access,
in the counting chamber,
rebellious,
the rings worship
the rest.
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godthumbs, in bark-
shirt I haul in the
lowest treecreepers, soon it will be
today, forever, the
markings, the
radiationbrood,
come a-
dancing across the antimatter,
toward you,
into the comet-
conservatory.
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C
ROCUS
, from the hospitable
table seen:
sign-sensing
little exile
of a shared
truth,
you need
each stalk.
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V
INEGROWERS
dig up dig
under the darkhoured watch,
depth for depth,
you read,
the invisible
one commands the wind
to stay in bounds,
you read,
the Open Ones carry
the stone behind the eye,
it recognizes you,
on a Sabbath.
D
U DARFST
mich getrost
mit Schnee bewirten:
sooft ich Schulter an Schulter
mit dem Maulbeerbaum schritt durch den Sommer,
schrie sein jüngstes
Blatt.
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V
ON
U
NGETRÃUMTEM
geätzt,
wirft das schlaflos durchwanderte Brotland
den Lebensberg auf.
Aus seiner Krume
knetest du neu unsre Namen,
die ich, ein deinem
gleichendes
Aug an jedem der Finger,
abtaste nach
einer Stelle, durch die ich
mich zu dir heranwachen kann,
die helle
Hungerkerze im Mund.
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der Himmelsmünze im Türspalt
preÃt du das Wort,
dem ich entrollte,
als ich mit bebenden Fäusten
das Dach über uns
abtrug, Schiefer um Schiefer,
Silbe um Silbe, dem Kupfer-
schimmer der Bettel-
schale dort oben
zulieb.
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I
N DEN
F
LÃSSEN
nördlich der Zukunft
werf ich das Netz aus, das du
zögernd beschwerst
mit von Steinen geschriebenen
Schatten.
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allein-
gängerisch zwischen
auch mich verwandelnden Nächten,
kam etwas zu stehn,
das schon einmal bei uns war, un-
berührt von Gedanken.
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D
IE
S
CHWERMUTSSCHNELLEN HINDURCH
,
am blanken
Wundenspiegel vorbei:
da werden die vierzig
entrindeten Lebensbäume geflöÃt.
Einzige Gegen-
schwimmerin, du
zählst sie, berührst sie
alle.
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D
IE
Z
AHLEN
, im Bund
mit der Bilder Verhängnis
und Gegen-
verhängnis.
Der drübergestülpte
Schädel, an dessen
schlafloser Schläfe ein irr-
lichternder Hammer
all das im Welttakt
besingt.
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deiner Hand.
Aus der Vier-Finger-Furche
wühl ich mir den
versteinerten Segen.
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W
EISSGRAU
aus-
geschachteten steilen
Gefühls.
Landeinwärts, hierher-
verwehter Strandhafer bläst
Sandmuster über
den Rauch von Brunnengesängen.
Ein Ohr, abgetrennt, lauscht.
Ein Aug, in Streifen geschnitten,
wird all dem gerecht.
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M
IT ERDWÃRTS GESUNGENEN
M
ASTEN
fahren die Himmelwracks.
In dieses Holzlied
beiÃt du dich fest mit den Zähnen.
Du bist der liedfeste
Wimpel.
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von deinem Jochbein beäugt.
Ihr Silberglanz da,
wo sie sich festbiÃ:
du und der Rest deines Schlafs â
bald
habt ihr Geburtstag.
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B
EIM
H
AGELKORN
, im
brandigen Mais-
kolben, daheim,
den späten, den harten