the beauty, the beauty, the beauty

snow & smoke on the coldest of nights peering out frost scratched windows which fog with every breath

thought of fingernail scrawling a violence against the white something so naked the untouched brutal cold

covered up the world can be so beautiful

---

FOUR POEMS Paul Celan translated by Pierre Joris

YOU WITH THE DARKNESS-SLINGSHOT,
you with the stone:

It is overevening,
I throw light behind myself.
Fetch me down,
take us
seriously.