Paul Celan

Reachable, near and not lost, there remained in the midst of the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes, in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, __nriched_ by all this.

With wine and being lost, withless and less of both:I rode through the snow, do you read meI rode God far--I rode Godnear, he sang,it wasour last ride overthe hurdled humans.They cowered whenthey heard usoverhead, theywrote, theylied our neighinginto one of theirimage-ridden languages.

Speak you too,speak as the last,say out your say.Speak-But don__ split off No from Yes.Give your say this meaning too:Give it the shadow.Give it shadow enough,Give it as muchAs you know is spread round you fromMidnight to midday and midnight.Look around:See how things all come alive-By death! Alive!Speaks true who speaks shadow.But now the place shrinks, where you stand:Where now, shadow-stripped, where?Climb. Grope upwards.Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!Finer: a threadThe star wants to descend on:So as to swim down beliow, down hereWhere it sees itself shimmer:in the swellOf wandering words.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

rush of pine scent (once upon a time),the unlicensed convictionthere ought to be another wayof sayingthis.

Each arrow you shoot offcarries its own targetinto the decidedlysecrettangle

How you die out in me:down to the lastworn-out knot of breathyou're there, with a splinter of life.

Don't sign your namebetween worlds,surmountthe manifold of meanings,trust the tearstain,learn to live.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

They are the efforts of someone who, overarced by stars that are human handiwork, and who, shelterless in this till now undreamt of sense and thus most uncannily in the open, goes with his very being into language, reality-wounded and reality-seeking.

A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the __ot always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.