SPEAK, YOU ALSO, Paul Celan

You speak too,

speak last,
say your piece.

Speak –

but don’t split no from yes.
And give your speech this meaning:
give it the shadows.

Give it shadows enough,
give it as many
as you know have been dealt between
midnight and noon and midnight.

Look around:
Look, how lively it is around here—

where death is! Lively!
They speak true, who speak shadows.

But now the place where you stand is shrinking:
Where will you go now, denuded by shadows?
Climb. Grope upwards.
You grow thinner, harder to recognize, finer.
Finer: a thread
on which it wants to be lowered – the star:
so that it can float down,
down to where it sees itself shining: in the swell
of wandering words.