CELAN'S NIGHTMARES
Nov. 23 birthday

The backbone of any survivor
say Treblinka ,Hiroshima
or Sobibor
has not broken a mirror
or cracked the code of a poet
in the war's background
as a child sounds out near
iron curtains and blinds
of quarantined string
and shutters between states
where souls cannot leave
or stay anywhere to sing
without any earth's ashes
to call your own
but smashes a century's icons
wavering in unspoken lines
which make certain waves
in your long corridor's voice
from dry bones breathing
out of an exiled music.