Ashglory
By Paul Celan
Translated By Pierre Joris
Ashglory behind
your shaken-knotted
hands at the threeway.
Pontic erstwhile: here,
a drop,
on
the drowned rudder blade,
deep
in the petrified oath,
it roars up.
(On the vertical
breathrope, in those days,
higher than above,
between two painknots, while
the glossy
Tatarmoon climbed up to us,
I dug myself into you and into you.)
Ash-
glory behind
you threeway
hands.
The cast-in-front-of-you, from
the East, terrible.
No one
bears witness for the
witness.
Copyright Credit: Paul Celan, "Ashglory" from BREATHTURN INTO TIMESTEAD: THE COLLECTED LATER POETRY A BILINGUAL EDITION by Paul Celan, translated by Pierre Joris. Translation copyright © 2014 by Pierre Joris. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. http://us.macmillan.com/fsg
Source: Breathturn Into Timestead (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2014)