Ode to Celan

Corona
Paul Celan (translated by Michael Hamburger)

Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.






Corona
Paul Celan

Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.

Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.

Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, das es Zeit wird.

Es ist Zeit.

Leonore

I’m sitting here in the dark right night listing to the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock on our far wall with nothing much else to do but play wow, watch the fog roll, or latment the passing of another day. So instead I felt like writing you an email.

Once I got an email from this random person. It was titled “eye drops and sunshine.” It was this personal letter written from this person, I think from Maryland, to a person named Leonore. The way it was written the style and beauty all made me kind of sad by the end of the email that I wasn’t the Leonore to which the email belonged. I wrote back the person and explained the mistake, hoping they would find they “right” Leonore soon.

Maybe someday I will be the right Leonore