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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Antschel, who wrote under the pseudonym Paul Celan, was born in Czernovitz, in Romania, on November 23, 1920. The son of German-speaking Jews, Celan grew up speaking several languages,...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About War
From War Is Kind
by Stephen Crane
The Iliad, Book I, Lines 1-15
by Homer
April 27, 1937
by Timothy Steele
Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Eighth Air Force
by Randall Jarrell
For the Union Dead
by Robert Lowell
from War Music (an account of books 16-19 of Homer's Iliad)
by Christopher Logue
I Have a Rendezvous with Death
by Alan Seeger
I Hear an Army
by James Joyce
Memorial Day for the War Dead
by Yehuda Amichai
My Father on His Shield
by Walt McDonald
Spoken From the Hedgerows
by Jorie Graham
The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals
by Norman Dubie
The Fall of Rome
by W. H. Auden
The Star-Spangled Banner
by Francis Scott Key
The War Works Hard
by Dunya Mikhail
Woman Martyr
by Agi Mishol
Related Prose
An ABC of Translating Poetry
by Willis Barnstone
Lesson Plans
Poetry in Translation
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Death Fugue  
by Paul Celan
Translated by Jerome Rothenberg

Black milk of morning we drink you at dusktime

we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at night
we drink and drink
we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie
There’s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes
who writes when it’s nightfall nach Deutschland your golden hair Margareta
he writes it and walks from the house and the stars all start flashing he whistles his dogs to draw near
whistles his Jews to appear starts us scooping a grave out of sand
he commands us to play for the dance

Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at dawntime and noontime we drink you at dusktime
we drink and drink
There’s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes
who writes when it’s nightfall nach Deutschland your golden hair Margareta
your ashen hair Shulamite we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie
He calls jab it deep in the soil you lot there you other men sing and play
he tugs at the sword in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you men you other men you others play up again for the dance

Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at dusktime
we drink and drink
there’s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta
your ashen hair Shulamite he cultivates snakes

He calls play that death thing more sweetly Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland
he calls scrape that fiddle more darkly then hover like smoke in the air
the scoop out a grave in the clouds where it’s roomy to lie

Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at noontime Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland
we drink you at dusktime and dawntime we drink and drink
Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland his eye is blue
he shoots you with leaden bullets his aim is true
there’s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta
he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky
he cultivates snakes and he dreams Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland

your golden hair Margareta
your ashen hair Shulamite



Copyright © 2005 by Paul Celan and Jerome Rothenberg. From Paul Celan: Selections. Reprinted with permission of the University of California Press.
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