PAUL CELAN

"Love Crown"

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Now autumn nibbles its leaf from my hand: we are friends.

We take time out of a nutshell and teach it how to go:

time turns and goes back into its shell.

Now in the mirror it is Sunday,

in the dream there is a place for the calm of sleep,

in the mouth, the taste of truth.

My eye moves down the belly of my love:

we see one another,

we speak the darkness to ourselves,

we love one another like poppy and remembrance,

we sleep like the liquor in seashells,

like the ocean in the bloodbeams of the moon.

We stand at the window embracing, they see us from the street,

it is time they knew!

It is time that the stone let itself break into flower,

that the unresting heart beat.

It is time there was time.

It is time.

Translated by Robert Pinsky