笑笑

Speak, You Also
Paul Celan (1920-1970)
tr. Michael Hamburger


Speak, you also,
speak as the last,
have your say.


Speak --
But keep yes and no unsplit.
And give your say this meaning:
give it the shade


Give it shade enough:
give it as much
as you know has been dealt out between
midnight and midday and midnight


Look around:
look how it all leaps alive --
where death is! Alive!
He speaks truly who speaks the shade.


But now shrinks the place where you stand:
Where now, stripped by shade, will you go?
Upward. Grope your way up.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer.
Finer: a thread by which
it wants to be lowered, the star:
to float farther down, down below
where it sees itself gleam: in the swell
of wandering words.