Monday, November 23, 2020

Robert Kelly :

folio : Paul Celan/100

 

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

 


 

 

 

Robert Kelly was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 24, 1935, where he spent his first eight years on the south shore of Long Island. He discovered a love for poetry after reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” and developed an affinity for the “haunted reality of words.” Early influences also included Charles Baudelaire, Ezra Pound, and Guillaume Apollinaire.

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.