Tell me mother
as you kiss your baby
that no one died today,
that no one was a martyr
or a hero,
and that all who now sleep will awake,
and that the sirens that now sound
will be the only death recorded,
and that the drivers without cars,
and the cars without drivers,
will each find a partner
for as long as they need,
like the Palm Doves in the park.

Tell me mother,
that as long as you
love your baby
all mothers will love theirs
and no mother will again mourn
the foreheads without a kiss
and the kiss that has no forehead
to receive it.

Todesfugue ("Death Fugue")
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
We’re digging a grave like a hole in the sky;
there’s sufficient room to lie there.
The man of the house plays with vipers; he writes
in the Teutonic darkness, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He composes by starlight, whistles hounds to stand by,
whistles Jews to dig graves, where together they’ll lie.
He commands us to strike up bright tunes for the dance!

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come dawn, come midday, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house plays with serpents; he writes...
he writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...”
We are digging dark graves where there’s more room, on high.
His screams, “Hey you, dig there!” and “Hey you, sing and dance!”
He grabs his black nightstick, his eyes pallid blue,
screaming, “Hey you―dig deeper! You others―sing, dance!”

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house writes, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...” as he cultivates snakes.
He screams, “Play Death more sweetly! Death’s the master of Germany!”
He cries, “Scrape those dark strings, soon like black smoke you’ll rise
to your graves in the skies; there’s sufficient room for Jews there!”

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come midnight;
we drink you come midday; Death’s the master of Germany!
We drink you come dusk; we drink you and drink you...
He’s a master of Death, his pale eyes deathly blue.
He fires leaden slugs, his aim level and true.
He writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He unleashes his hounds, grants us graves in the skies.
He plays with his serpents; Death’s the master of Germany...

“Your golden hair Margarete...
your ashen hair Shulamith...”

Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.

Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, black, milk, drink, vipers, serpents, hounds, grave, graves, golden, hair, Margarete, Shulamith, sing, dance, Death, master, Germany, Nazis, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts

I wore a gold Star.
I bear a tattoo.
When Six Million died
I was one of the few,
Through the mercy of God
or the missed chance of Fate,
I escaped from the boxcar
into winter’s dim light.

My parents and sister,
Long are dust on the wind.
Their faith and their race
were their only known sins
Now, though stooped and arthritic,
I still testify
To the bitter cup tasted
when the Six Million died.


(An elderly docent at the Shoah Center recalls his brush with death at the hands of the Gestapo)

Bigotry has a smell of death
The fuhrer would watch piles on piles of empty flesh
In the summer of 1941
On the grounds of Auschwitz, that place weighed heavier than a ton
Years after the shoah, would this understanding begin to unfold
That nothing stains the soul more indelibly than loathe
What do the blind see?
Your oratory abhorrence they forsee
They see, not your bitter visage
But their ears crush under the muscle of your burning rage
What do the deaf hear?
Even years after the passing of a yesteryear
I suppose, they hear words, like skin caressing skin
Your tirade tearing their tissues like a throw of javelin
Along Its path, since decades, turning into centuries
Before times were tamed
Even after times were maimed
Our tongues have plucked
Incessantly
The plumage of quarantined birds
With stubborn shame
And a sequence of demise ensues
Their voice also dies, so does their silence
Because after all
Bigotry has a smell of death

The Laughing Matter
We laughed and laughed it was raining heavy we didn't see we were
off road and flew, still laughing- over
a precipice and landed in an opening in the forest
where rabbit congregates, we had laughed so much we had to go
out of the car and ***
Then it snowed big white flakes the stuff and rabbit appeared in
all white inquisitive as they are when stuck a neck in we rolled up
The window fried rabbits every day.
The dog got sick of the same food and wanted to go home
we didn't have that instinct but followed behind as luck would have it
was only five minutes away a farmer with his tractor took the car to
the mechanic and we laughed and laughed making funny noises
of the stuffed owl on the wall….the house took fire and people in white
took us to a care home where we were giving anti-laugh medicine,
funny hats and it was New Year Eve.  
What had caused this hilarity was because Hillary Clinton had lost
the election and Trump a millionaire was going to bring work to those on
the dole, of course, this will not happen and my car is not insured for
the Shoah that will engulf us

You Were My Death
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You were my death;
I could hold you
when everything abandoned me—
even breath.

Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.

Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, death, breath, abandoned, abandonment, hold, holding, Germany, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts

O, Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O, little root of a dream
you enmire me here;
I’m undermined by blood―
made invisible,
death's possession.

Touch the curve of my face,
that there may yet be an earthly language of ardor,
that someone else’s eyes
may somehow still see me,
though I’m blind,

here where you
deny me voice.

Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.

Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, root, dream, blood, death, face, eyes, blind, sight, seeing, vision, voice, voiceless, silent, silenced, ardor, love, passion, desire, Germany, abandoned, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts

having suffered the shoah
you should be ashamed
national socialist
in all but name
a fascist dictatorship
eugenically made
and educated in Germany
antisemitic if i dare to say
youre the same
the way you treat the Palestinians
reminds me of the ghetto tales
you told to help pave the way
to the gilded land of Israel