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chagalov:

Paul Celan, Paris, 1964 -by Gisèle Freund

With a Variable Key

With a variable key
you unlock the house in which
drifts the snow of that lefts unspoken.
Always what key you choose
depends on the blood that spurts
from your eye or your mouth or your ear.

You vary the key, you vary the word
that is free to drift with the flakes.
What snowball will form round the word
depends on the wind that rebuffs you.

— Paul Celan. From ‘Paul Celan: Selected Poems’ (transl. by Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton, Penguin Books, 1972) [in scribd]

photo from RMN