Salvation (Paul Celan)

Once, 

I heard him, 

he was washing the world, 

unseen, nightlong, 

real. 

 

One and infinite, 

annihilated, 

they I’ed. 

 

Light was. 

Salvation. 

--Paul Celan, Once                          

Note: Paul Celan was the son of Jewish parents, both of whom died in the concentration camps. This was a defining experience of his poetry. 

Image source: Doris Zinkeisen, Human Laundry, Belsen, 1945, as part of a website devoted to Artists Responses to the Holocaust, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/artists-responses-to-the-holocaust 

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