With wine and being lost, with less and less of both: I rode through the snow, do you read me I rode God far--I rode God near, he sang, it was our last ride over the hurdled humans. They cowered when they heard us overhead, they wrote, they lied our neighing into one of their image-ridden languages.
Paul CelanWith a changing key, you unlock the house where the snow of whatโs silenced drifts. Just like the blood that bursts from Your eye or mouth or ear, so your key changes. Changing your key changes the word That may drift with flakes. Just like the wind that rebuffs you, Clenched round your word is the snow.
Paul CelanPoetry is perhaps this: an Atemwende, a turning of our breath. Who knows, perhaps poetry goes its wayโthe way of artโfor the sake of just such a turn? And since the strange, the abyss and Medusaโs head, the abyss and the automaton, all seem to lie in the same directionโis it perhaps this turn, this Atemwende, which can sort out the strange from the strange? It is perhaps here, in this one brief moment, that Medusaโs head shrivels and the automaton runs down? Perhaps, along with the I, estranged and freed here, in this manner, some other thing is also set free?
Paul Celan