One of these stones

Pierre Joris reminds us that it is now forty years since Paul Celan left his Paris apartment and "went into the water".


AT BRANCUSI'S, THE TWO OF US

If one of these stones
were to give away
what it is that keeps silent about it:
here, nearby,
at this old man's limping stick
it would open up, as a wound,
in which you would have to submerge,
lonely,
far from my scream, that is,
chiselled already, white.

Translation by Michael Hamburger.