Paul Celan

"Poetry is a sort of homecoming."

"They are the efforts of someone who, overarced by stars that are human handiwork, and who, shelterless in this till now undreamt of sense and thus most uncannily in the open, goes with his very being into language, reality-wounded and reality-seeking."

"A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality."

"Reachable, near and not lost, there remained in the midst of the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes, in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, “enriched” by all this."

"Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss."

"Speak you too,speak as the last,say out your say. Speak-But don’t split off No from Yes. Give your say this meaning too:Give it the shadow. Give it shadow enough,Give it as much As you know is spread round you from Midnight to midday and midnight. Look around:See how things all come alive-By death! Alive!Speaks true who speaks shadow. But now the place shrinks, where you stand:Where now, shadow-stripped, where?Climb. Grope upwards. Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!Finer: a thread The star wants to descend on:So as to swim down beliow, down here Where it sees itself shimmer:in the swell Of wandering words."