English

 

 

TO DROWNED PAUL CELAN

 

As if it is happening now

That river in whose head you spin

Remembers you

Until now

It remembers

Your lined forehead

Your eyes staring

Into unknown spaces

Your hand furrowed

By a scalpel and your terrifying jump

On that crazy morning

Celan everything was real

In that obscure event

Your waterproof shoes

Your last cigarette

The Mirabeau bridge

The distant whistles of the steamboats

Your shadow that always wanted you to look different

The dreams that left you imagining how the final scene would be

And this sky with its seven layers

Why didn’t you think about things for longer?

Was the world so terrifying?

What are you doing to tell the world about the magnetic river mud

A garden settled in the face of nature

Or roots of a river squeezed between two banks

Celan

The sun was present at the farewell ceremony

And the eager water applauded

With great enthusiasm

Your overwhelming presence

The German-speaking Jew

The comrade tormented in concentration camps

Celan

We miss you

 

 

CHASTISEMENT

 

We were beaten by fathers

Who used sticks to educate

And violence to intimidate

And by the new educators

In classes where we learned

The teachings of the national anthem

And that the god of mercy

Composed verses of forgiveness

And foxes give birth

To sly cubs

And sons of bitches are the original inhabitants of hell

And Indians worship cows

While we drive them to be slaughtered

And America the all-powerful

Is the one who starts wars

And every evil person is George Bush

We were beaten on these feet that were dragged into the abyss

On nights

When clouds stand for a minute’s silence

On nights when revolutions fail

On nights when stones migrate en masse from the Andes mountains

We were beaten

When comrades demolished a communist statue in Mariupol

When our dreams endured in torture chambers

When we peeled the wrinkles off rivers with Alzheimer’s

We were beaten

We who come from the third world

We are the ones who believe in things that make the gods unhappy

We are the ones who play symphonies on matchboxes

Children of the bars where wise flies get drunk

Children of the tents that accompany our life stories

Children of women deprived of abortion rights

Children of streets where dogs die of heart failure

We were beaten in the presence of stars that feed on midges

Sometimes

With gases that make tears flow

And sometimes with waves that play billiards on the back of the Mediterranean

And each occasion was appropriate.

 

 

Translated by Catherine Cobham