CELAN / HEIDEGGER

24 July 1966

Black milk of Black Notebooks still getting drunk 

morning, noon and night, too useful to discard,

the marginalia too horrible to ignore, the historical footnote

we drink and we drink until we vomit

we drink to our black ulcers in the humidity

Apollo driving his fiery chariot out of Peenemünde

digging graves in the smoke which is solid like a wall

An uneasy poet with stones in his pockets writes a

Todesfuge, the only poem of his they understand.

In Todtnauberg is a cabin where a

philosopher writes about being but understands nothing

he has amnesia like an architect who has forgotten

and plays with the vipers of language, he writes

as the sun tries to push above the horizon over Germany

The German language speaks Being,

while all the others merely speak of Being

your golden Arnica in the golden hair of Margarete

he steps outside, there is a star-die on the well from which is drawn

black water the bottomless well that can never be filled.

He greets the Jewish poet but no one can understand the poet

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy

and the philosopher is incapable of understanding

Being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with;

its possibility is a proof for the latter

The poet writes in the guestbook the philosopher

scratches something out in his notebook and commands the Jews

play tangos in Auschwitz and Birkenau.

The two are trapped in the poet’s most famous poem

the poem is culture and culture the poem is a prison

though they do not know it

caged in the eternal now of the only poem it is permitted

to write after Auschwitz.

Black milk, black water, black book, black eyes,

black blood we are still drinking

everything moves in relation to history

and even though the sun rises, the dark is always only

ever temporarily in retreat, oozing beneath the soil like oil

they write of the darkness that grew in the soul of Germany Margarete

the small white faces of Eyebright in the ashen hair of Shulamith

hair darkened with ash from the chimneys, from those ceased being

The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being

the poet has almonds in his trouser pockets like the almonds of Passover

The orchestras are playing in Auschwitz they are playing in Birkenau

they play a death fugue he grabs for the baton in his belt and commands

they play a tango in the shadow of death but music can’t melt him

his eyes are blue like ice his eyes are bright like steel

there is a blind spot, a streak in his vision

the orchestra is digging with their instruments

their anxiety makes them real

The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism 

the poet and the philosopher paths of batons along the moor

like a streak in the eye and consonants vibrate on the ear not understood

they lead each other up the garden paths

the poet will grant no Persil-passport while the orchis blushes

orchis the flower of thinkers and poets, bespattered with red

the almond-word shoots not in his heart

a black star above them a star-die a twisted cross

We are drunk on the black milk of the night and the new day

we drink until we can hold no more

those men who built their ivory towers of forgetfulness

those men who hid in the golden hair of Margarete garlanded in Arnica

from the ash-darkened hair of Shulamith lost in the small

sad white faces of Eyebright white like the moon

Apollo of poetry and reason reaches the moon but he got there

from Peenemünde, scattering ashes from his chariot over Germany

rising on smoke to the sky how do you like your blue-eyed boy?

I acknowledge Death, look him in the face and free myself of him

He shouts play a fugue better than Death is a philosopher from Germany

who forgets things Being and Nothing digging holes in history

Black poems black philosophy we are still drinking

not thinking, which is most thought-provoking

and maybe learning from drinking Death who was Master in Germany

Death was Master in Germany and they called him Apollo

their philosophy was Death and his eye bright is blue

he shoots you full of words: Every man is born as many men

and dies as a single one

his words are like balls of lead: only God can save us

his words are like bitter almonds

a man lives in a Hütte in the tarnished hair of Death Mountain

he looses his philosophy on us, his being and our nothing

he lives there still playing with the vipers of language and daydreaming

of once more being Master of Germany he digs in his garden

Your golden voice Paul Celan

Your Black Notebooks Professor Heidegger