Paul Celan
Romanian-French · 1920–1970
Romanian-born poet who wrote in German, forging a fractured, haunted language to bear witness to the Holocaust. His poem "Todesfuge" is among the most important of the twentieth century.
Wikipedia ↗“Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts.”
Deutsch
“Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night.”
Death Fugue (Todesfuge) ↗ (1948)
“Es war Erde in ihnen, und sie gruben.”
Deutsch
“There was earth inside them, and they dug.”