Last Night Together Parts with the Pumpkins

by Jeff Celan 

  

            And cacophonous long this lasts, Evening

but joyned in discombobulate leaving;

          Here in overpowering silences of Ephemeral

    Continent should flee to loftier discontents.

        This disconsolate night of hearts, of

              Whippoorwilled havenots,

     Paced in chase of coffeelaced days,

                And synaptical didactic rage,

Bones huesoed white on washed whaling bays,

             Our parting, each part, is a step

                   Too fast for the music;

      Each backward glance a stumble over shuffling

      Feet, a nervous apology given to laughtear eyes,

             A voice admittant to shared anxieties;

         Hopes peak below waters like patient alligators,

    With the night turned over in purple grape abash

     Like salt-strewn watermelon pinafores tied to

             Corded necks of heaven with dendrite rings and roots

    Year by year snapping and Saturnìne lipped

    Trying to be a bib

       A necklaced,

                      tie-laced apron to catch some crumb of a bowling comet.

    The night wind has butcher knives that

Pulp out our gourds

            and

    Scoop out our seeds,

             and

Plant them in rows

        until more squashes orangely grow,

            that carve out our faces

             and place us

        On doorstoops with candlelit

                hollows

                for faces.

                        “Loneliness is a periodic element,

Elliptically alkaline atoms unsplittable,

    Compounded with nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen

        To be breathed in every gulp that our life to

Lungs and tongue must taste and shake of death.

             Our lives are trips to general stores

     Piggybacked on spines of wanting apes, and

  What have we found on these generic shelves

       Not bought and consumed by everyone else?

It will never leave us, No not us--

       Forever this caged feeling of emptiness.

              We will be doomed to stroll in the Deli-Bakery

Amongst sourdough rolls, sandwiches, cakes, and raspberrycheese Danishes.

   It will be three in the morning but the superstore will be open

And frequented by insomniacs and zombies like us.

      This is where we must depart,

    At your house.

Tomorrow you will be gone from under the poplar groves

   To flit cordially amongst houses waving sun in a foreign cloudstrung city

       And pass through the jungled ghettoes and

           Jacaled hoves

That spackle the shores,

boards gessoed, cracking and gritty,

    Stirring the inverse and brinespanked wind.”

Must our always coming winter

    frostbite,

          chew up,

       and vomit our

Leaves into chirruping throats

       off the fetalplumed thrush,

Gnarl up our roots

           and arthritic limbs while

              by the logcrack fire, red

Snow melts from the soles of waterproof boots?

     

      Blue and black rivers of makeup have fertilized your face and

Made my love for you grow into a flowerbed already withered.

            “We will speak around the subject

And circumvent all our present night;

     Last among the ones we passed from branch to branch

         In the uncertain northerly breeze

              That pressed our changing leaves.

Be a head,

           Be ahead

               Of your whiteveiled winter

     And snap the icicles dripping off the pocked

                    Vinylsiding lintel.

            Yes wear your coat and wrap your arms,

         Clasp your arms in crossed bundles

            Around your chest.  Protect and keep it warm.

          Savor all feelings of bark and sand

             And roughness and bumps to rub.”