96"X38" Acrylic on panel.
The work hopes for more than *remembrance* but seeing true and acting in compassion.

50 years ago today, Paul Celan, a Jewish holocaust survivor and poet that I greatly admire killed himself in Paris. On his desk he left Wilhelm Michael’s biography of Hölderlin, “Das Leben Friedrich Hölderlins,” lying open to page 464. He had underlined this sentence from a letter by Clemens Brentano: “Sometimes this genius goes dark and drowns in the bitter well of his heart.”

TENEBRAE. By Paul Celan

We are near, Lord,
near and graspable.
Grasped already, Lord,
clawed into each other, as if
each of our bodies was
your body, Lord.
Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
we are near.
Windbent we went there,
we went there to bend down
over crater and maar.
To the trough we went, Lord.
It was blood, it was
what you spilled, Lord.
It shone.
It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.
Eyes and mouths gape, so open and empty, Lord.
We have drunk, Lord.
The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.
Pray, Lord.
We are near.

Shalom. _/\_. 

h/t to Pierre Joris. Celan Translator/poet.