frohes neues

Had a quiet new year’s eve. Dinner with my mother, then out on the street at midnight to watch the neighborhood light up. Anyone can set off fireworks in Germany. Like in China, just go into the market and buy a bag full. I’ll watch, but I won’t do it. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday and avoided the champagne our neighbors were passing around, so the glass I pretended to nurse was freezing my hand off. Miles was disturbed by the noise and stench of smoke, and afraid because about three years ago a firecracker set a house on fire not far away, so we went back in and I put him to bed. The streets, as usual for new year's day, are a mess of exploded paper this morning.

I was up first this morning and tried translating some Paul Celan poems from “Die Hand voller Stunden.” It went fine, though in a couple places there was a word I didn’t know, and in one of the poems, “Im Memoriam Paul Eluard,” the grammar was difficult. I love Celan, but he’s a poet whose story you need to know to appreciate the poems, some of which would fail without context and a familiarity with his overall work. I love his short poems especially, his symbols, his despair.

On a more hopeful note, here’s a winter poem I wrote a year or so ago. (It was in Worm.)

Snow Path

New year’s litter of colored paper,
nothing will be remembered right.
Bare branches splay
against the sky like mindless scribble.

The best season is silence.
Wool and cross-stitch of frost,
snow --

in their fretwork,
every parting lip is closed.

Fir-circled field,
untrodden path,
this morning I’m first to find it.

I’ve forgotten what I wished for;
perhaps it has come quietly.