Count the almonds,
count what was bitter and kept you awake,
count me in:

I looked for your eye when you opened it, no one was looking at you,
I spun that secret thread
on which the dew you were thinking
slid down to the jugs
guarded by words to which no one's heart found their way.

Only there did you wholly enter that name that is yours,
sure-footed stepped into yourself,
freely the hammers swing in the bell frame of your silence,
the listened for reached you,
what is dead put its arm around you also
and the three of you walked through the evening.

Make me bitter.
Count me among the almonds.


Speak, You Also

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 the 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.

by Paul Celan