Its Tear Is Steam

Another area in which my poetry knowledge is pretty limited is non-English/non-Russian poetry. I'm starting to rectify that - here's something I'd never read before today.

Eye of Time

Paul Celan, trans. Herman Salinger

This is the eye of time:
it squints cross-eyed
under a seven-colored brow.
Its lid is fire-washed,
its tear is steam.


The blind star flies at it
and melts away against the hotter lashes:
world waxes warm 
and the dead
bud out and blossom




The imagery is allegorical with almost an undercurrent of science fiction. There's myth and physics jumbled up and I don't quite know what to make of it. I think this is one of those poems where, at just three sentences long, it's still going to stick with me for a long time.


Usually that's how it is with me and poems. I don't go around quoting lines at people or declaiming verse like a town crier; I'm not Poetry Man. But every now and again some phrase or natural phenomena will give off an echo of something I half-remember. And when I cast around for what was echoed, it's often a poem.