It's always too late

About 20 April 1970, around Passover, Celan went from the bridge into the Seine and, though a strong swimmer, drowned unobserved. ... Mail piled up under the door of his barely furnished flat. Gisèle called a friend to see if perhaps her husband had at last gone to Prague. On 1 May a fisherman came on his body seven miles downstream. …

People have said that Celan took his own life at forty-nine because valid speech in German was impossible after or about Auschwitz. Yet this was the impossibility that incited him … And he did speak – more validly than could ever have been imagined.

Maybe he felt too alone: “no one / witnesses for the / witness.”

– John Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (1995)

It’s always too late
when you got nothing
– Nine Days

it’s always too late
when you got
nothing
walking in the rain
or under girders

seeing in a special way
the light from
buses, passing
did I ask you?
what?

too soon, no doubt
my friend is
Wendy
Wendy Nushe’s trying to
climb out

Dark

Poetry no longer imposes itself, it exposes itself
– Paul Celan

DAS GEDUNKELTE Splitterecho
hirnstrom-
hin,

Die Bühne über der Windung,
auf die es zu stehn kommt,

soviel
Unverfenstertes dort,
sieh nur,

die Schütte
müssiger Andacht,
einen
Kolbenschlag von
den Gebetssilos weg,

einen und keinen.

[5/9/68]

La poésie ne s’impose plus, elle s’expose
26.3.69

DARK splinter echo
nerve im
pulse

the groyne above the turn
where it ends up

panopticon
it’s not
just look

the worship
chute
one
riflebutt away
from prayer silos

one none

mr darling writes to penthouse forum

Isn’t this ‘Britney Spears’ some sort of sixteen-year-old pop idol with a pretty face and plastic voice? I think I noticed a lot of 9-year-old girls on a documentary going on about how she was their heroine and ultimate symbol of everything good in life. Oh yeah, more’s beginning to come back to me ... she’s impertinently sexy, licks her lips and looks like she’s just come in from an all-night party at the local brothel, and proclaims she’s a virgin and gives lectures about traditional family values. She the one?

– Letter to the author (29 October, 2000)

mr darling writes to penthouse forum

dear forum

i think my secretary likes me the other day she was slurping my footlong yes I know it sounds a lot but she works out every morning and is now accustomed to it when i nearly came out and asked her do you like me id have preferred to use her christian name though for such a declaration and i dont know what it is take some dicktation instead ms smith i said and sodomised her on the desk
its preying on my mind
is it just my imagination sometimes when im deep inside i see the faintest glimmer in her eyes as if there was something there some kind of feeling love tenderness call it what you will then she orgasms instead
ive tried buying her things not just the usual g strings baby dolls vibrators but romantic things a bunch of flowers liqueur chocolates she takes the lot the loot beautiful booty
i dont know what to do talking to her seems such an extreme step to take and yet i fear i may be driven to it i cannot work or sleep or even masturbate to climax what would you suggest im really desperate

– Wendy Nu