Poetry

“The chaplain tracing a cross / of oil with his thumb on your forehead, and your eyes following / upward his hand, then holding, following, / holding.”

“onto the cellophane snack bags / blown into corners and a few / resplendent sunbleached cans you projected / a prefabricated sorrow”

“This pebble here is a monument to someone. / So is a cloud a stub a poppy a dog—”

“Do you hear our onceness / beating at the door? How the past / outlasts on either end”

“I saw a knife covered with dirt and blood. I picked it up. I held the cherub by its wings.”

“I am surrounded by family to whom I am a stranger.”

Reflections on mystery, translatability, and the limits of the speakable in single Celan poems

“There was talk of your God, I spoke / against him”

“Who does not expect the poem, will not recognize it either — ”

“She feeds me for a long, murky time / her heavy wine and black milk.”

“The leaf is a song in a minor key”

“narcotized rage / is all the rage”

On loss

“WORKERS OF THE WORLD / JOIN THE STRIKE FOR GUARANTEED LIGHT”

“Lucifer only asked God why did you make me / and God only asked Mary why did you make me”

“These gold rings—how many prisoners could be freed for the price of these rings?”

“you are laying in the hospital for a week thinking about the various distances of love”

“These days one holed up inside the other”

“asleep I knew precisely where / everything touched everything”

“It was January 19, 1943. / Will these dates be noted on the margins of history?”

“were it not for the pleasure, / it would have been frightening”

“In my journey looking for / where Time went, / I spent half of my life.”

“You cannot adequately light a black thought.”

“When it’s night / And they go to bed, / Mother begins / To wish she were dead.”