Dear Paul Celan:

Your voice from grayed void, an echo
etched on wax cylinders.

    Die Nachzustotterende Welt,
    bei der ich zu Gast
    gewesen sein werde,

    [The to-be-restuttered world,
    whose guest I have been]

Your poems: brain-thrashing
thickets. They face
wounds.

    Unentworden, allerorten,
    sammle dich,
    steh.

    [Undebecome, everywhere,
    gather yourself,
    stand.]

Your dark matter
fragments where words
are scars in need of de-
ciphering.

    Du liegst im großen Gelausche,
    umbuscht, umflockt.

    [You lie in the great listening,
    ambushed, snowed in.]

15 years ago, I wrote you
a poem. Through the years,
I've slashed unneeded
words, sins against
language. This is what's left.
May it be enough:
whittled/worlds

        whittled
worlds      velvet

    brain-blasting
 bell-clang

            of light.

   alcoholic angels
        in syphlitic sores

   begs us to eat

        their

            eyes

to taste the

    recorded

  horrors

May our spirits meet,
Rusty

P.S.: Thanks to Pierre Joris for his astonishing translations.