EARISH: THIRTY POEMS OF PAUL CELAN
for Dick
Higgins,
in
memor I am
[First version completed
23 March 2002. Revised Winter 2005/ 2006]
Translator’s Note:
In 2002 I was
asked to contribute to Alec Finlay’s edition of translations by several hands
of Paul Celan’s poem “Irisch.” While
working on my translation (which duly appeared in the second volume, Irish
(2), Edinburgh 2002), I began to work on other dimensions of the poem, then
of other Celan poems. The present homophonic translations are one result. By
homophonic translation I mean: listening to the sound of the [in this case
German] poem until you can hear it as English — the result, the poem heard, no
doubt ‘says’ a ‘different’ thing from the ‘original.’ Those quoted words are all questionable, more
question than answer, I mean. So here
are some of my hearings of Celan poems. They are, in effect, translations into
Earish.
A reference in italics at the foot of each poem identifies the book in which appears the German original text here
heard heading towards English:
at =
Atemwende
f =
Fadensonnen
licht =
Lichtzwang
schn = Schneepart
zeit = Zeitgehöft
WILD YOU
THEN NOTE SHARING FONDEST
in the view’s tongue
rune the shattered yards hounded a
neighbor to rouse
and hay run thick – thank him
Feel like it’s a war,
dash here the freed of twice failed curb’s
rock
out tone ― go face them.
f 214
THE
STREAKER, salt’s washer, clomb
the wiser
grove’s keynote in dismal
gate and knickers off
Off the shudder see grass down even
in anchor shot and
naked as number dares
(ant’s willing)
red sail.
f 186
EARISH
Give me this vague wreck
heave her the corn’s teacher to die in his
laugh
this vague wreck
heave her down laugh’s path
this wreck that his story’s taken on
on hurts hung
more gone.
f 184
THE
TWISTED NINE
gone haggled to hill free
vexed
the numb unblue
sets out
the glaciermilk cart
the foal vixen again dour
thus swimming the seal
ear her unbearable un-
brandy
f 96
SPADE. Unswam eager fetish
buys stitch the sopping foam Christ born,
off gay road fun
frost spree kin
hipped from womb shy noon neck,
day’s fence star flees off, where sand rouses,
neat even so bring him
the hovel there sign,
I need cup lasting, a
deep unafraid walker ―
coaches art one seeks there, over
Him.
f 166
DO WARS
mean death
thick Kant I called them
weary of all it unfeels
f 142
DARES OUT
A SHOCKED HEADED HEARSE
daring she goes feel install earring
groves shy mast forty
tiles of
milk sweaters
shovel.
f 110
ALL DYING SEAGULLS ARE BROKEN? NAY.
Gay verse ether oak
see, the brief
haughty elf
hoofing took her:
that the well, the hornet
fern, the milk
knower, when
the mood she tours clock be awayed,
the clock be dumb mood, weed her,
that she nicked oak
then elect throne dear idiot and
speak low, the dottle
for a biter too for
many take a long dying
often.
f 80
POE KNOCKS
The unstirred bleak kite’s if a fawn-high
hayrick
dame fear them in
den, she’ll gird a needle key fixed
her n’t a Leah dish
hinter seek here.
f 58
EYING A
HIM HILL tempest
lock in. Arm
enter knocked it them
or it.
The lid’s slack reflex averring
the hip begone
tomorrow’s two for
null.
f 118
EDGE LOCKED, edge locked.
When weary at semester’s veering
blond cats going we to malls
allowing gone to Paris, eye no outgone
glued long
though arctic is a steer
came again sprung and
under crooned emit on his sighing horn or
under tease to his tease to.
f 174
OFF ENDS,
in
harm’s boor, kine
unend lick her shoe reaming ― a
neem
cow in the cloister
been debts why blue ticker to saying, to
summon
to some wake shore.
at 168
HERB
Linda shone height:
oak the Amish kite stays full of oaken―
door in
a trinket, wash the buildings away half
heaving them wake, then she came in,
door in
her lashed what oak dished out the
sprocket
Fortnum’s with a guest too,
the dewy sheen leaves, we
ten tense wires wore the outs louder
hair best and sighed and needs.
at 120
STAY IN
him, shatter
this wonder moss in the loft
firm emend and needs staying.
On her can’t
fur thick
align.
Myth all in woe’s door, in room hot
oak own a
sparkler.
at78
WOE?
In them, locker mass in the knot.
Imagining all under Sheba
in lonesomest uproar,
in wise hide his shucked knee.
Was her nod alone?
neigh in thinky bornstone
shattering to summon ― or came
sick
deeper in winter,
fly.
at 194
WAGES IN
SHATTERING BREAK
die on hand.
House the fear finger fork he
wheel it mere then
first eye inert and say again.
at 68
EAR IN
AFTER, for gambled her
deepen.
Wearish ― ―
Noon you, wearish
the ― woeing a blowgunner? ―
ash it rousing,
ease vista thick tube gliding,
like tender growing rich meat
deem thick doors waxen tensile
her under suit virgin build
under men
gone soggy and flaccid and
dank rice unlike
bite her.
at 216
ASH IN
GLORY hinder
thine inner shuddered work not eaten
hand and on dry vague.
Pontiff’s is iced malts: here,
eye in drop fen
of
them or drunken one ruder blade,
deep
in first eye nor then swore
rushed us off.
(Off the sink wrecked an
atom’s isle, damn all’s
higher all’s over.
twitching why shimmer’s coat wearing
the blank
tottering mind to us, her off clomb,
groovish mission dish and in dish.)
Ash in
glory hinder
like dry vague
hands in.
at 176
HIM
ASKING
hide a fall
seek to go
bet each dish off dense incense
they give al-
legiance
shadowing us to myth-leaked tongue.
schn 108
SHH!
LEWDER, a smart
slog her nicked in his gazes,
air whoosh dear
the sending of her hymn
wise and down even.
schn 112
CALL
CROCUS, in
hell worth an eye
stick brief griped as
form door to endow door hair,
unspoiled bar,
Spring stuff a
lecturing dear to
the Delhi design
hill of tines, a flock
also sick here rose,
in the found graven
start seek the mould out.
schn 148
FOR MINE
whether like tin destiny
combed the hand to stay,
myth dare to
dear heave hers oak forest,
eye in clearing
hold seek a vista sight
in Christ, and each soak
humans why,
monk’s mall frolic
steers the hymnal
uncertain share being
for us.
zeit 164
EYE ON
STEEPLE FOLD her in
linden rage and kestrel:
a sphere dying gazing, eye grows us,
white evil done wrenching,
dizzy us seeing.
zeit 186
EACH
DRINK WINE out’s why glazers
unsuck her on
the coy knee’s seizure
Vienna
on bend her,
got gift the steam gavel off
as eye on the climbing
erect one,
owes the low stream mill failed
underdied.
zeit 188
UNLICKED
AT they came, he
did each in deer
or swarm,
fly Garuda art
the known one ― see,
be far on the engine,
eye in seeking spoke, horn,
balled each
sore wetter feeling in
forced.
zeit 196
WORD’S
AXLE by dense of dancing:
gate to suitor, she leads each on,
by fair shall all of them
earth lick,
each here, a fear faring
eye him melts you vex,
dust blows to be wiser, faun
over her, on
unsure word sailing long,
it’s why sun’s a gift herd to you,
why,
on each eye know―
you want?
zeit 198
BACK ON
summer, neckings
the hooks are full
on finger and on light stroll
fear in, then eye an un-
flickering
word’s deer
back on
my stair.
licht 18
BILE’S
WARMER
heaving us
grace breaker
myth, tilling ax tenon thief land―
in sail flow or do
myth-dirty
evil name building
half noon.
licht 24
TREAD
MEANING of dying, linking
Monday, Saturn.
Share bone for sea gull
the unloaf banning doored drowsing
Ace missed yet the hour can, bleak sighing
fear eye naked right—
go born.
licht 10
ANGER
IMPELLED by faun gone
from eye on the lass:
greened and shore up, shore up and
greened.
In this laugh’s wretched gain, o eye mill.
licht 14
Kelly has gone on to publish more than fifty poetry titles, including Kill the Messenger Who Brings Bad News (1980), which received the Los Angeles Times First Annual Book Award. Other titles include Red Actions: Selected Poems 1960–1993 (1995), Lapis (2005), and May Day (Parsifal Press, 2007).
Kelly has also written a collection of essays and manifestoes, In Time (Frontier Press, 1972), was co-editor (with Paris Leary) of the anthology A Controversy of Poets (Doubleday Anchor, 1965), and has written several volumes of short fiction. His poems and stories have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Serbian. He has also served as contributing editor to a number of magazines, including Conjunctions and Poetry International.
As Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris state in volume two of the anthology Poems for the Millennium, “Kelly is heir to both Pound & Zukofsky in his vision of the poet as a ‘scientist of the whole . . . to whom all data whatsoever are of use / world-scholar.’”
He has received an Award for Distinction from the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Wagner College, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and as the Tufts University Visiting Professor of Modern Poetry. He has also served as Poet in Residence at Yale University (Calhoun College), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Kansas University, Dickinson College, California Institute of the Arts, and the University of Southern California.
He currently serves as Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature and Co-Director of the Program in Written Arts at Bard College, where he has taught since 1961.
