Count up the almonds, Count what was bitter and kept you waking, Count me in too: I sought your eye when you glanced up and no one would see you, I spun that secret thread Where the dew you mused on Slid down to pitchers Tended by a word that reached no oneโs heart. There you first fully entered the name that is yours, you stepped to yourself on steady feet, the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence, things overheard thrust through to you, whatโs dead put itโs arm around you too, and the three of you walked through the evening. Render me bitter. Number me among the almonds
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 CelanWith 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 Celan