Homecoming
(Paul Celan)
Snowfall, thicker and thicker,
dovecolored, like yesterday,
snowfall, as if you were asleep just now.
Into the distance, the stacked-up whiteness
and beyond it, endless,
the sleigh-trace of the lost.
Below, hidden,
pushing itself upward,
the thing that hurts the eyes so much,
mound after mound,
unseeable.
On each mound,
hailed home to its own today,
sucked down into its muteness: an I
of wood, a post.
There: a feeling—
blown across by the icewind,
it fastens its dove-, it's snow-
colored cloth bannerwise.