Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Just as I feared, the further I read into the volume, selected and translated by Michael Hamburger, the less I like the poems. The lyrical richness of the first two books seems to dry up into obsession repetitions in the third. My favorite in Mohn und Gedachtnis , or Poppy and Remembrance , (1952) is the heartbreaking "Your hand full of hours." 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 Im 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, yo...

Singapore Jade sent me this quote from Celan with whom I have not the slightest acquaintance, but now feel I should. The quotation hits all the right bells in me: loss, secure, orient, being en route, across but not above time, dialogue, heart, approachable reality. And how charming and romantic to receive a prize from the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. from Celan, Paul. "Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen." Collected Prose. Trans. Rosemarie Waldrop. Manchester: Carcenet Press, 1986. 33-35. "Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and could resurface, 'enriched' by it all. I...