IMPROVISATION #57
PAUL CELAN'S NIGHT
(1920-1970)

It could be another dawn
following history's
misunderstood ghosts
when a soul desires
to understand his pain
as headstones are now silent
along European roads
at rainy ramps with wire
and rope now covering
over dozens of camps
for what has happened
not too long ago
as this man whose past life
was buried in Germany
tries to recollect
his body of thoughts
yawning into a stolen sleep
as wide as a dream's mirage
of his language's span
enfolding his metamorphosis
still hearing in his pall a cry
of human crimes on earth
which belied a hidden story
of fascism's mass murder
as his mysterious words
in this brief careless span
of grief from his time
now sealed in blood
and stone without flowers
upon silent graves on earth
turning back the black hours
yet now violently
boast at the back over him
Celan is still starry-eyed
yet blessed in his way
that he can write a memoir
in a deeply clear verse
of voice through his neck
and ribs of woolen garments
are rent now in sackcloth
and ashes from rumors
circulating fairly far and wide
from a memory which crashes
is now retold in our day
from an exhausted yet cruelly
snow driven universe
shattered beyond lament
what still cannot be fully told
even from Paul Celan's night
about willing crimes
committed a few years ago
when his government sinned
he is a still life beside himself
by his daybed's first light
staring at a painting of Heine
from his own vertigo
he vets the Shoah crimes
with regrets of life
shaped by the dead
in a personal breath of poetry
from unforgettable sentences
catching the first light
of the sun's open window
watching small birds
below the sea's Nereid of wind
on these fifty weary road years
which with holds repentance
near children playing
over snowfalls of this city,
outside his tiny chamber room
with gas in the air
Celan is under covers
moving blankets
over the last nightmare
along doomed electric wires
covering his profound mind
to reveal a pity so deep
in a time of burnt out gloom
for those names read out
in a human kind with pity
where we have learnt
recently that a poet is alive
by his reading lamp
on his sheets where his life's
secrets that cannot yet be
fully explained
yet his words survive even
in the back end of being alive
sight reading at human shame
as his German words stains
with the pretended names
turn into numbers
of XY678999
as Celan slumbers
when elements manifest
and sounds survive
from  gentle nature fields
it still rains on those children
fallen underground
by nests of hungry winter hawks
yet he knows the meaning
of being tempest-tossed
that even in the Black Forest
no body has not been revealed
or complained of its concealed
gloomy mushrooms
resting on a valley of toads
hearing an eerie laughter behind
the glasses on Chrystal Night
Celan is trying to nap
as he hears attic drinkers
with goblets under the moon
on a harvest
on late afternoon fields
hearing others behind
a hidden S.S.army shield
asking for another glass
of beer or schnapps
outside his cold windows
Celan is thinking about
his unwritten manifesto
after the shadows pass him
by a carpet wall
shielding shadows
over the rafters
where another snowstorm
masks to fall
at sunset at Octoberfest
Paul wishes to be warm.