Paul Celan from *Speech-Grille*
translated by Joachim Neugroschel

Stigma

"We slept no more for we lay in the clockwork of sorrow
and bent the hands like rods,
and they bolted back and scourged time till blood was drawn,
and you spoke a gathering twilight,
and twelve times I said thou to the night of your words,
and it opened and stayed apart,
and I put one eye in its lap and plaited one in your hair
and I twisted the fuse between them, the open vein-
and a young flash of lightning came floating."