28 January 2014

How I Feel About Winter















"Januaried
into the thorn-covered
rock recess.  (Get drunk
and call it
Paris.)

My shoulder frost-sealed;
silent
rubble owls perched on it;
letters between my toes;
certainty."
-       Januaried from 70 Poems by Paul Celan, translated from the German by Michael Hamburger, New York, Persea Books: 2013


Image:
Detroit Photographic Company - Miner's Cabin In Winter - Colorado, c. 1910, beineke rare Book Library, Yale University, New Haven.

2 comments:

Hels said...

you are in the wrong hemisphere :)

Of course if you were here in January, you would run the very real risk of having your house burned down by bushfires... so noone wins.

Jane said...

Hels, thanks. To paraphrase the famous New Yorker cartoon from 1928 - "I say it's winter and I say the hell with it."