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Tag: Paul Celan

Sunday, February 8th

old school

Soul Revivals, “If You Miss Me,” c. 1975


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lagniappe

reading table

Speak, You Also
by Paul Celan (1920-1970, translated from German by Michael Hamburger)

Speak, you also,
speak as the last,
have your say.

Speak—
But keep yes and no unsplit.
And give your say this meaning:
give it the shade.

Give it shade enough,
give it as much
as you know has been dealt out between
midnight and midday and midnight.

Look around:
look how it all leaps alive—
where death is! Alive!
He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

But now shrinks the place where you stand:
Where now, stripped by shade, will you go?
Upward. Grope your way up.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer.
Finer: a thread by which
it wants to be lowered, the star:
to float farther down, down below
where it sees itself gleam: in the swell
of wandering words.

Saturday, December 20th

Ever feel you can’t find a foothold?

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Piano Concerto (1942); Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (Jeffrey Tate, cond.) with Mitsuko Uchida (piano), live

 

 


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lagniappe

reading table

Aspen tree, your leaves glance white into the dark.
My mother’s hair was never white.

Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine.
My yellow-haired mother did not come home.

Rain cloud, above the well do you hover?
My quiet mother weeps for everyone.

Round star, you wind the golden loop.
My mother’s heart was ripped by lead.

Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges?
My gentle mother cannot return.

—Paul Celan (1920-1970; translated from German by Michael Hamburger)