Tallow Lamp

The monks with hairy fingers opened the book: September.
Now Jason pelts with snow the newly sprouting grain.
The forest gave you a necklace of hands. So dead you walk the rope.
To your hair a darker blue is imparted; I speak of love.
Shells I speak and light clouds, and a boat buds in the rain.
A little stallion gallops across the leafing fingers--
Black the gate leaps open, I sing:
How did we live here?


(from Mohn und Gedachtnis by Paul Celan, trans. by Michael Hamburger)