Your hair too hovers above the sea with the golden juniper.
With it, it turns white, then I dye it stone-blue:
the color of the city where last I was dragged to the south . . .
With ropes they bound me and tied a sail to each one
and spat upon me from foggy mouths and sang:
“O come over the sea!”
But I as a pinnace paint the wings purple
and rattled the breeze to myself and, ere they slept, put to sea.
I was to dye them red, your locks, but loved them stone-blue:
O eyes of the city, where I fell and was dragged southward!
With the golden juniper your hair too hovers above the sea.
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Excerpted from Memory Rose into Threshold Speech by Paul Celan, translated from the German by Pierre Joris. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Translation, Introduction, and Commentary copyright © 2020 by Pierre Joris. All rights reserved.
