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Poems
[...]
Speak ?
But don't split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
give it the shadow.
Give it shadow enough,
give it as much
as you see spread round you from
midnight to midday and midnight.
Look around:
see how things all come alive ?
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.
[...]
Paul Celan
From: "Speak You Too", Selected Poems and
Prose, translated and edited
by John Felstiner (New York & London: Norton, 2001), pp. 76-77.
[...]
Sprich ?
Doch scheide das Nein nicht vom Ja.
Gib deinem Spruch auch den Sinn:
gib ihm den Schatten.
Gib ihm Schatten genug,
gib ihm so viel,
als du um dich verteilt weisst zwischen
Mittnacht und Mittag und Mittnacht.
Blicke umher:
sieh, wie's lebendig wird rings ?
Beim Tode! Lebendig!
Wahr spricht, wer Schatten spricht.
[...]
Paul Celan
From: "Sprich Auch Du", Gedichte in zwei
Banden
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975), vol. 1, p. 135.
[...]
as he unfurls his warm smile,
embracing that very same world!
He shakes hands with creatures of various sorts,
embraces the righteous and wicked alike,
greets the victim and hangman as one.
The fool!
He hugs the world like a pillow;
he hugs the world as though it were
the memory of his own engagement…
or a breeze across field of wheat!
He takes the world to the hair of his chest
like his daughter…
without their appearing on his face
any indication at all
that he's bothered
by the sobbing
or the tears
pouring from the sockets of his eyes!
Taha Muhammad Ali
From: "Abd el-Hadi the Fool", So What:
New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005,
trans. Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin (Port Townsend, WA:
Copper Canyon Press, 2006), pp. 129-135.
Lines for My Image
Lines for my image that were scattered around like short sticks that
go and gathered come and disperse composing lines for my image
a pictureimage
interspersed lines for my image like thin sticks created and return
like a picture and spreading out
a straight image a distorted image a short image the long image
a right image negative image all these are heaped from my side lines
of my image
lines for my image thin like quick black hyphens and white and
transparent
for my utter mortalimage in colors outlined lines of passages
straight lines from attribute to attribute by shortcut like me I from
I to myself on a straight path
Yona Wallach
Translated by Linda Stern Zisquit
To pile like
Thunder to
its' close
Then crumble
grand away
While Everything
created hid
This ? would
be Poetry ?
Or Love ? the
two coeval come ?
We both and
neither prove ?
Experience either
and consume ?
For None see
God and live ?
Emily
Emily Dickinson
From: Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate
Letters
to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Ashfield, MA: Paris Press, 1998), p.
165.
Your Face to My Face
Be to me
your face becoming
to my face.
Be to me
face to
face.
Mouth to
mouth. Utterance
to utterance.
Avot Yeshurun
Translated by Gabriel Levin and Lilach Lachman