Paul Celan quotes:

The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosopher's Stone.

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosophers Stone.

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

Death is a master from Germany.

Don't sign your namebetween worlds,surmountthe manifold of meanings,trust the tearstain,learn to live.

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.

no one bears witness for the witness

Spring: trees flying up to their birds

Tall poplars--human beings of this earth!

The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

rush of pine scent (once upon a time),the unlicensed convictionthere ought to be another wayof sayingthis.

A nothing we were, are, shall remain, flowering: the nothing--, the no one's rose.

A poem, being an instance of language, hence essentially dialogue, may be a letter in a bottle thrown out to the sea with the-surely not always strong-hope that it may somehow wash up somewhere, perhaps on the shoreline of the heart. In this way, too, poems are en route: they are headed towards. Toward what? Toward something open, inhabitable, an approachable you, perhaps, an approachable reality. Such realities are, I think, at stake in a poem.

Count up the almonds, Count what was bitter and kept you waking, Count me in too: I sought your eye when you glanced up and no one would see you, I spun that secret thread Where the dew you mused on Slid down to pitchers Tended by a word that reached no one's heart. There you first fully entered the name that is yours, you stepped to yourself on steady feet, the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence, things overheard thrust through to you, what's dead put it's arm around you too, and the three of you walked through the evening. Render me bitter. Number me among the almonds

Each arrow you shoot off carries its own target into the decidedly secret tangle

He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

I went with my very being toward language.

Illegibility of this world. All things twice over. The strong clocks justify the splitting hour, hoarsely. You , clamped into your deepest part, climb out of yourself for ever.

in the air, there your root remains, there, in the air

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

Read! Read all the time, the understanding will come by itself.

Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.

The language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere.

The two heart-grey puddles: two mouthsfull of silence.

There was earth inside them, and they dug.

There's nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

They've healed me to pieces.

We are told that when Hölderlin went 'mad,' he constantly repeated, 'Nothing is happening to me, nothing is happening to me.'

who is invisible enough to see you

With a changing key, you unlock the house where the snow of what's silenced drifts. Just like the blood that bursts from Your eye or mouth or ear, so your key changes. Changing your key changes the word That may drift with flakes. Just like the wind that rebuffs you, Clenched round your word is the snow.

With wine and being lost, with less and less of both: I rode through the snow, do you read me I rode God far--I rode God near, he sang, it was our last ride over the hurdled humans. They cowered when they heard us overhead, they wrote, they lied our neighing into one of their image-ridden languages.

you're rowing by wordlight