the day Celan saw Antschel in the Seine

Phil Hall

  the day Celan saw Antschel in the Seine
& slipped into the ripples of the bookstalls

  he rowed into the troughs of our shadows
into shadowed river bottom — into shadirt

  he entered the round Zion of the water bead
and the synagogue of the ear of corn

  (as Dylan Thomas showed us we could)
into his mother's wide eye he returned — parsed

  (struck-shine fading incredulous against mire)
he sank through the curdled sheen of Der Spiegel                 April 1970

  to smuggle labyrinthine green
back inside grey Kampfortable tongues

  his cemetery-lifeguard psalms sinking in us
yellowed scrap iron pleatings of despair

  the same bookstalls today along the Seine
temple gardens shattered by his repair

  grubbing (suckling) into these furrows
exhume die blessing fossil

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Phil Hall's works copyright © to the author.