"The Secret Of the Ferns"
In the vault of swords the leaf-green heart of the shadows looks at itself.
The blades are bright: who would not linger in death before mirrors?
Also in jugs here a sadness that's living is drunk to:
flowery it darkens up, before they drink, as though it were not water,
as though here it were a daisy of which darker love is demanded,
a pillow more black for the couch, and heavier hair. . .
But here there is only dread for the shining of iron;
and if anything here still glints up, may it be a sword.
Were not mirrors our hosts, never we'd empty the jug from this table:
let one of them crack and split where we're green as the leaves.
. . . . .
Friends and Strangers, Paul Celan.
His is the voice of the lamp underground.
His thirst is his religion, the greendark starvation of the blind. No one yet
believes in the doors to
his sadness. The tendrils struggle sightless and white, white, white--
The witness
of the blue watering of a mirror
struggling to know itself
on the wall alone. Like eyes, Nightside. The tendrils are all white and terrible
and
romantic. They are
underneath
the struggle of living,
the stalk vomiting itself into little green windows.
I am listening
sometimes into the thumb-sized shields a trillion
small reflections in a goldmirror like a quiet happiness
turn to their thirst. Inside the blackness
is a sponge. Silence. I'll drink from your living, your noon
leaden shadow. Graveside. The blackness of not knowing where to go.
Integers
of the lampless
you are
Green. The blackness of the hour still is safe from banners and orgies.
Sometimes the cold knowing stabs itself from within.
Safe from their shape is a brightness for killers.
The fountains of silence
O fallen onto death's words war within.
1 comment:
today's word is dandy (1. a man who is excessively concerned about his clothes and appearance; a fop.)
today's word is based on the idea that only a dandy would wear a green gabardine suit with magenta pointed beetle boots.
a dandy also likes his suit jackets lined with satin scarves.
today's word denies its relationship with death. because life is green and naive, consumed with its svelte body and the perfect part in his hair.
but black and white these are the strands that are growing on my head. yes, dearest cabbage, it is long enough to finally wear in a bun.
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