Skandalon: Poems

Paul Celan in Paris

29 Pau l C e l a n i n Pa r i s What was it Heidegger wrote? Everybody wondered. The words were plain on the page, But the sense of that German prose would break a skull. Past midnight, Antschel struggled with the massive book. Do not imagine he did not know the Philosopher was a Nazi. He marked the obvious lines With a marginalized six-pointed star. He could feel the book burning itself, its ashen pages yielding A crematorium pollution. The Jew in him attended, with the greatest care. The Jew in him? What Was he thinking? Had he become a prison? The Philosopher’s German strung its concertina wire around the bedroom. Soon everyone would die of it, soon everyone’s name would change. Retranslate: Dasein. The Seine. ...