The Best Thing Anyone Ever Said About Paul Celan
Today you will the say the any ever
best thing any ever anyone
Said about Paul Celan
The world is if it isn’t does it matter isn’t
waiting or it might be might as well
Be if it knew and some
People for some people the wait is mostly it’s
a world in which the fact of Paul Celan
was and is always will have been and be
A fact and necessary living in such a world
is the far greater agony the wait is no
agony not compared to living in that world it is
Absurd to say he wouldn’t Paul Celan would recognize it still
No person ever is naive
but populations are naive and always will be
even innocent
is the far greater agony
It is / More like a toothache
the pain of the wait for some
More like a pain in the hole from which
You even now prepare yourself to speak
Copyright © 2013 by Shane McCrae. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on May 15, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"As I wrote this poem, I was thinking, or trying to think, about wars, especially the horrors of our recent wars, and about individual and collective responsibility. But the whole time I was also thinking about Paul Celan’s work--that I don't understand it at all, that I love it, that loving it feels wrong--and about individual and collective responsibility."
--Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae is the author of eight poetry collections, including Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).