Why This Sudden At-Homeness

Why this sudden at-homeness, all-out, all-in?

I can, look, sink myself into you, glacierlike,

you yourself slay your brothers:

earlier than they

I was with you, Snowed One.

Throw your tropes

in with the rest:

Someone wants to know,

why with God I

was no different than with you,

someone

wants to drown in that,

two books instead of lungs,

someone who stabbed himself into

you, bebreathes the cut,

someone, he was the one closest to you,

gets lost to himself,

someone adorns your sex

with your and his betrayal,

maybe

I was both

Copyright Credit: Paul Celan, "Why This Sudden At-Homeness" 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)