I was always
The passenger
Who made the boat
more likely to sink
Birth
I was born
A little before
my due date
On the night
when controversy raged
About everything
A release
conditional on obeying the terms
I was born deceived
and still am deceived
At the moment
when Satan was drinking a toast to his third victory
On the night
when knives were being sharpened
I was born
With a memory
sewn together with a needle and thread
Full grown in a
way
With ideas
liable to change
With an arm not
up to armed combat
With a soul
where anxiety has taken root
With a mouth
that stammers when it speaks
And a compound
name with no links to modernity
And a heart open
to all possibilities
I was born
By divine decree
In the alleys
Of the third
world
Following Plan B
In a somewhat
primitive way
In the clinic of
a midwife who didn’t believe in fate
I was born in
installments
With this body
liberated
From the womb
that kept trying to abort it.
To The Drowned Paul Celan
As if it is
happening now
That river in
whose head you spin
Remembers you
Until now
It remembers
Your lined
forehead
Your eyes
staring
Into unknown
spaces
Your hand
furrowed
By a scalpel and
your terrifying jump
On that crazy
morning
Celan everything
was real
In that obscure
event
Your waterproof
shoes
Your last
cigarette
The Mirabeau
bridge
The distant
whistles of the steamboats
Your shadow that
always wanted you to look different
The dreams that
left you imagining how the final scene would be
And this sky
with its seven layers
Why didn’t you
think about things for longer?
Was the world so
terrifying?
What are you
doing to tell the world about the magnetic river mud
A garden settled
in the face of nature
Or roots of a
river squeezed between two banks
Celan
The sun was
present at the farewell ceremony
And the eager
water applauded
With great
enthusiasm
Your
overwhelming presence
The
German-speaking Jew
The comrade
tormented in concentration camps
Celan
We miss you
We who don’t
read much
We who press on
these fingers
So they say
something
We who rely on
chance
To find
ourselves
We who are
trying to make you a promise
A Concert
In a while
And with these
fingers that have never pulled a trigger
I will play a
tune
On a sunflower
On your shirt
buttons if I can
A tune
Longer than the
river Rhine
More powerful
than the whistling of the wind that travels with its diplomatic passport
To the sound of
rumbling tanks
I will play that
rebel tune
To the audience
who doesn’t take the performance seriously
To the sun that
investigates the identity of the new prophets
To dogs who
think about sex
To that
invincible force
I will play a
tune
With or without
these crooked fingers
On matchboxes
On walls
Where ‘The
people want’ is written
On barbed wire
sharper than it ought to be
On shoes that
run marathons on bad days
I’ll play the
tune
That’s spreading
through these fingers now
Like a boat that
has overcome its obsession with sinking.
Translated By: Catherine Cobham
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