Your hand full of hours, Paul Celan

Your hand full of hours, you came to me - and I said:
Your hair is not brown.
So you lifted it lightly on to the scales of grief; it weighed more than I...

On ships they come to you and make it their cargo, then put it on
sale in the markets of lust -
You smile at me from the depth, I weep at you from the scale
that stays light.
I weep: Your hair is not brown, they offer brine from the sea and
you give them curls ...
You whisper: They're filling the world with me now, in your
heart I'm a hollow way still!
You say: Lay the leafage of years beside you - it's time you came closer and kissed me!

The leafage of years is brown, your hair is not brown.

by Paul Celan (1920 - 1970)
translated by Michael Hamburger

Die Selbe Schmerz, Paul Celan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7XYiZwULyE&feature=related

Paul Celan In den Flussen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d4KFvn6Rzw&feature=related

Ich horte sagen..Paul Celan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Y3Qf0PKqM&feature=related

Red

Red

(For two voices)

First Voice:

The tulips red

Not yet opened glance

At me

Noticing my eyes.

Peonies

White with yellow centres

Delicate

Like her elegant wrist in ruffles--

They turn away

And favour the room

Over me.

The world is not yet safe

It hovers

Tired animal

Unsure

If I would make

A worthy prey

Destined

To dread

Colour

Yellow was my fate yesterday

I saw it biting

Everywhere.

Voice Two:

Now I try to hide in red

Why is it a sinking

Thing?

It seems to shift like clay

But its redness

Growls and

Growls.

Speak!

The tulips say

Why have I chosen the

Insistence of red?

It’s everywhere like

Cherry orchards.

I should lose myself here instead

In the turquoise folds

Of these velvet curtains that drape

And fold the empty stage.

I long to disappear

Into the soft darkness of their pleats.

Coda:

Red knows how to laugh

Knows its origins

Are in wildflowers

Indian paintbrush

Painted on faces first

Or else on jars

Red knows mystery

Knows the place where the sacred lies

It is the color of the color

Of our liquid life.

Red knows itself

Through and through

It is the color of desire—

Red knows itself

On the blackbird’s wing—

In the flaming Autumn leaves.

Red knows and knows

Itself

As Love.

After Basho

Moon echoes

across the floor;

plums ripening in my mouth

The sound of your voice

Blossoms

Falling on my hair

I am a prisoner of wakefulness

Autumn rains

Wash through the street

At the Train Station

Two teenagers, maybe 18 or 19,

hand in hand.

He's wearing a black baker's boy cap,

blonde curly hair.

She's in a black woolen hat,

long golden brown hair.

Running madly to catch a train,

they stop, pause..

giggling as they try to locate platform 5.

Both smile at me enjoying

this moment

of going somewhere

together.

They run off, and are gone.

jean-michel basquiat

The Coin Lost In The River Is Found In The River

The sun and moon are travelers in eternity.
Even the years are wanderers.
For those whose life is on the waters or leading a horse through the years
each day is a journey and the journey itself is home

- Basho

帰り度雁は思ふやおもはずや
kaeri taku kari wa omou ya omowazu ya

are the geese yearning
to depart...
or not?
- Issa

嫌れた雪も一度に消へにけり
kirawareta yuki mo ichi do ni kie ni keri

the snow I hated
all at once
has melted away

寝せ付て外へは出たり夏の月
nese-tsukete soto e wa detari natsu no tsuki

it's bedtime
but out I go...
summer moon
- issa

Farewell, my old fan.
Having scribbled on it
What could I do but tear it
At the end of summer
- Basho

Tired of cherry blossoms
Tired of this whole world
I sit facing muddy sake
And black rice
- Basho

When the world blossoms
it can never be put back.
How the petals fall!
- Teitoku

古郷や卯月咲ても梅の花
furusato ya uzuki saite mo ume no hana

my home village--
even in summer
plum trees bloom
- Issa

手の込んだ草の花ぞよ短夜に
te no konda kusa no hana zoyo mijika yo ni

such intricate
wildflowers bloomed!
in one short night
-- Issa

Red

Red

(For two voices)

First Voice:

The tulips red

Not yet opened glance

At me

Noticing my eyes.

Peonies

White with yellow centres

Delicate

Like her elegant wrist in ruffles--

They turn away

And favour the room

Over me.

The world is not yet safe

It hovers

Tired animal

Unsure

If I would make

A worthy prey

Destined

To dread

Colour

Yellow was my fate yesterday

I saw it biting

Everywhere.

Voice Two:

Now I try to hide in red

Why is it a sinking

Thing?

It seems to shift like clay

But its redness

Growls and

Growls.

Speak!

The tulips say

Why have I chosen the

Insistence of red?

It’s everywhere like

Cherry orchards.

I should lose myself here instead

In the turquoise folds

Of these velvet curtains that drape

And fold the empty stage.

I long to disappear

Into the soft darkness of their pleats.

Coda:

Red knows how to laugh

Knows its origins

Are in wildflowers

Indian paintbrush

Painted on faces first

Or else on jars

Red knows mystery

Knows the place where the sacred lies

It is the color of the color

Of our liquid life.

Red knows itself

Through and through

It is the color of desire—

Red knows itself

On the blackbird’s wing—

In the flaming Autumn leaves.

Red knows and knows

Itself

As Love.

she was drowning in red (for Meredith Monk)

She was drowning in the music of red.

It seemed to be everywhere ---

In the Songs of Ascension,

In the lipstick that Meredith Monk wore.

The music was red, and

Her strange vocal sounds primitive,

suffused With red.

She thought of the red rocks of Teignmouth

That marked the last

Part of her journey home.

She was drowning in red,

And remembered Sylvia Plath’s tulips –

They wanted to devour her.

She couldn’t imagine where she began,

And they ended.

Red poppies for Remembrance Day---

32 million paper poppies sold

for remembrance they said –

Was that true?

She was drowning in red.

He had suggested red

Velvet curtains

and they had all laughed at this idea,

As if they recalled a bordello,

or an old theatre,

or the grandeur of an opera house.

Red velvet --- something you could sink into though,

But not drown.

She was drowning in red,

And longed for the safety of blue.

Someone she knew invented agapanthic blue,

But she preferred aquamarine or even turquoise.

Like the water around Iona,

surprisingly blue, like the Mediterranean.

She is drowning in red,

and must sink there.

Forget herself

Eternally in red.

Memory

What I longed for most----
was your hair
luxurious
Against my stubble.

The golden weight of it
in the shade.

Instead, I poured the memory of it
into a cup,
And stored it away,
So that I could sip a little
Every day
On my parched lips.

The amber liquid bathes
the stones
of my silence.

Correspondences -- Celan and Bachmann

For those of you who have enjoyed reading Celan, please do read the recently published correspondence between Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann in Correspondences translated by Wieland Hoban, and published by Seagull Press in Europe and University of Chicago Press in the US.

If you haven't read Bachmann there are several translations of her poems. Songs in Flight, trans. Peter Filkins is a good place to start. Also in German, a stunning collection of Bachmann's unpublished poems and fragments (published in 2000) called Ich weisz keinne bessere Welt/I know of no better World). .

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?isbn=9781906497446

Porthmeior Beach, St Ives

A girl/surfing/
Walks backwards slowly into the sea/
Cold grey waves/

Only feel the emptiness/of walking away/
From the world/
Into the long breath/ of the sea/

Comforting/enfolding/
Floating out to the empty line/
Which takes her to the Atlantic/
And all she’s left behind/

Barbara Hepworth’s hole in the sky/
Pale alabaster/heartstrings in wood
Batter my heart three-person’d god/
It is a rookery after all/a nest
Above the sea/where she could hammer & chisel/
Out a life/
The pagan hills she called them/a backdrop

The turquoise sea/beaches of mica and granite/
Shards of pottery from sunken ships/

This is the spot that takes her to the edge of things/
Where she can see through.

Rita Cummings
March 2010

Prayer Elms

Your voices fill the shadows of the elms.

The prayer elms,

Now in deep shadow,

Spare and spiky

In the darkening gloom.

Your voices, Lord, swell

The empty prayer elms

As if you were hidden

In the crusty bark,

Sheathed,

Roots touching the waters

Of this muddy stream,

Full in winter,

Your voices, Lord, in the elms—

The prayer elms.

The deep madness of your voices, Lord,

That haunts us—

In the spiky hands

Of the prayer elms,

Where your branches are destroyed,

And battered

Into the finger roots.

Burned out, dessicated,

Wandering,

In the tunnels of the earth, seeking

The knowledge of your Flesh,

The kernels

Of your eyes,

The pollen and the ash

Of your skin,

Crushed,

Washed away

By the moontides.

Your voices, Lord, in the prayer elms,

Hidden

In the alpine flowers of the White Mountains,

Where we sat down and wept,

For our age,

Our sorrows,

And the let the icy armour of snow

Become our comfort.

Envelop us

Against the darkness

Of your voices, Lord,

In the prayer elms.

Your whispers when the owl

Calls out at night.

When the chill grips us.

Your prayer elms,

Like a Cross in the moonlight.

When we hear your dark laughter,

Half real,

In our dreams,

And still the prayer elms,

White now

In the silence

Of the simple snow.

Nothingness...Paul Celan

Nothingness, for our
names' sake
---they gather us in---,
sets a seal,

the end believes we're
the beginning

in front of
masters
going silent around us,
in the Undivided, there testifies
a binding
brightness.

Das Nichts, um unsrer
Namen willen
----sie sammeln uns ein----,
siegelt,

das Ende glaubt uns
den Anfang,

vor den uns
umschweigenden
Meistern,
im Ungescheidnen, bezeugt sich
die klamme
Helle.

From a Shropshire Lad, A.E. Housman

Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Ich kenne dich...

Ich kenne dich,

Du bist die tief Gebeugte,

Ich, der Durchborte, bin

Dir untertan.

Wo flammt ein Wort, das für

Uns beide zeuget?

Du – ganz, ganz wirchlich.

Ich – ganz Wahn.

by Paul Celan

I know you,

You are the one I bow to….deeply

I am pierced through, and am

Your subject.

Is there a shining word that

Can express our meaning?

You – utterly real,

I – a deluded shadow.

Translation, Rita Cummings

Elegy: To My Mother

I will not soil my hands
with death--
though it come to me ragged--
not royal and threatening.
I will drape
my mother's clothing over me first,
cover my face
and hide.

I will not let the reaper sow
at random.
I will stand firm,
hold ground in the face of chill.
No hood will tempt me
or charm me.
I am immune to black.

I will not kiss the cross of suffering
bend and weep
at rotting flowers.
I will not see yellow flesh
and turn away.
I am abandoned,
but my heart is warm.
I will carry home
and mother with me.

Tectonic Shift

I

This is her dream:

—cataclysms, the plates shift and we are

Dropping, dropping, dropping…

The earth freefalls…

Everything is rent, submerged, shipwrecked.

The continent divides,

And it is the country of Mexico that is splintered – off.

She is floating freely in this dream,

But irretrievably destroyed—

The shards of her past – obliterated.

II

All that is left is illusion.

Mexico, a new Atlantis, has emerged,

It is rising in the wide, wide Pacific.

Here is her new beginning,

Her new terrain.

All is changed then in the freefall.

The entrance and the exit ---

III

It was always like this

Flying and landing somewhere.

Yet, still adrift—

Look how she floats –

So self-contained,

Holier somehow?

Let’s see where she drifts.

What islands she encounters.

And,

If,

If,

If,

She can soon – become

Her own

Continent

© Rita Cummings 1998

Tassajara Creek

Great teachers of Zen

Like the Tassajara Creek

I hear you preaching day and night

Even when the sky is full of silence

Porthmeor Beach

A girl/surfing/
Walks backwards slowly into the sea/
Cold grey waves/

Only feel the emptiness/of walking away/
From the world/
Into the long breath/ of the sea/

Comforting/enfolding/
Floating out to the empty line/
Which takes her to the Atlantic/
And all she’s left behind/

Barbara Hepworth’s hole in the sky/
Pale alabaster/heartstrings in wood

Batter my heart three-person’d god/
It is a rookery after all/a nest
Above the sea/where she could hammer & chisel/
Out a life/
The pagan hills she called them/a backdrop

The bruise she finds on her side/
A life of pushing up against things/
They go/unnoticed/
But leave their mark/indigo, yellow, mottled/

Still the turquoise sea/beaches of mica and granite/
Shards of pottery from sunken ships/

This is the spot that takes her to the edge of things/
Where she can see through

Ghost

GHOST

And so, in the splendour of

The winter leaves, black, yellow, rusty golds –

Where are you?

Why do you haunt me on each path?

I wonder where you are, and a door

Flies open in the wind.

Your shadow sits opposite me on the couch,

I cannot toss you off –

Cannot trudge through you ---

Or make you go away.

Hoping you are the fallen branch,

I climb over, or the dog running in the other direction,

Or the light fading through the bare branches

Of white birches.

Why won’t you disappear ---

And leave me to the forest,

To the pleasures of here,

To my own lonely terror?

Introduction

I'm almost 60 and now ready to put my poetry on the web! Poet, peacenik, dilettante and rebel, I'm a fan of music of all kinds. Former professor of literature, I seek other likeminded literattti out there who think outside the box. Poets who want to set their works to music -- or create poetical dramas. Also a student of Zen Buddhism for over 30 years...