---

Paul Celan - In Front Of A Candle
Work rating: Low

Of chased Gold, as
you told me to, Mother,
I shaped the Candlestick, out of which
she darkens for me in the midst of
fracturing hours,
your
Being-Dead’s Daughter.
 
Slender in Form,
a thin, almond-eyed Shadow,
Mouth and her Sex
danced round by Slumber-Beasts,
she drifts from the gaping Gold
she rises up,
to the Summit of Now.
 
With night-shrouded
Lips, 
I speak the Blessing:

In the Name of the Three
who fight with each other, until
Heaven dips down into the Grave of Feeling,
in the Name of the Three, whose rings
gleam on my Finger, whenever
I loose the Hair of the Trees in the Abyss,
so that richer Floods rush down through the Deep – 
in the Name of the first of the Three
who shrieked,
when called on to live, where his Word went before him,
in the name of the Second, who watched it and wept,
in the name of the Third, who piles white
stones in the middle –
I pronounce you free
of the Amen that overpowers us,
of the ice-filled Light at its rim,
there, where tower-high it enters the Sea,
there, where the grey one, the Dove
picks at the Names
this side and that side of Dying:
You stay, you stay, you stay,
a Dead Woman’s child,
sealed to the No of my yearning,
wedded to a Cleft in Time
to which the Mother-Word led me,
so that a single Spasm
would pass through the Hand
that now, and now, grasps at my Heart!
Source
The script ran 0.005 seconds.