The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

by Chana Bloch

  like wine, in order to forget. It won’t be able to.

  And like the contours of the Judean mountains,

  we also won’t find a resting-place.

  In the middle of this century we turned to each other.

  I saw your body, casting the shadow, waiting for me.

  The leather straps of a long journey

  had long since been tightened crisscross on my chest.

  I spoke in praise of your mortal loins,

  you spoke in praise of my transient face,

  I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey,

  I touched the tidings of your last day,

  I touched your hand that has never slept,

  I touched your mouth that now, perhaps, will sing.

  Desert dust covered the table

  we hadn’t eaten from.

  But with my finger I wrote in it the letters of your name.

  Farewell

  face of you, already face of dreaming.

  Wandering rises up, aloft and wild.

  Face of beasts, of water, face of leaving,

  grove of whispers, face of breast, of child.

  No more the hour in which we two could happen,

  no more for us to murmur: now and all.

  You had a name of wind and raincloud, woman

  of tensions and intentions, mirror, fall.

  For what we didn’t know, we sang together.

  Changes and generations, face of night.

  No longer mine, code unresolved forever,

  closed-nippled, buckled, mouthed and twisted tight.

  And so farewell to you, who will not slumber,

  for all was in our words, a world of sand.

  From this day forth, you turn into the dreamer

  of everything: the world within your hand.

  Farewell, death’s bundles, suitcase packed with waiting.

  Threads, feathers, holy chaos. Hair held fast.

  For look: what will not be, no hand is writing;

  and what was not the body’s will not last.

  Such as Sorrow

  Should you realize so much, daughter of every season,

  this year’s fading flowers or last year’s snow.

  And afterward, not for us, not the vial of poison,

  but rather the cup and the muteness and the long way to go.

  Like two briefcases we were interchanged for each other.

  Now I am no longer I, and you are not you.

  No more returning, no more approaching together,

  just a candle snuffed in the wine, as when Sabbath is through.

  Now all that’s left from your sun is the pallid moon.

  Trivial words that may comfort today or tomorrow:

  Such as, give me rest. Such as, let it all go and be gone.

  Such as, come and hand me my last hour. Such as, sorrow.

  Jerusalem

  On a roof in the Old City

  laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:

  the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,

  the towel of a man who is my enemy,

  to wipe off the sweat of his brow.

  In the sky of the Old City

  a kite.

  At the other end of the string,

  a child

  I can’t see

  because of the wall.

  We have put up many flags,

  they have put up many flags.

  To make us think that they’re happy.

  To make them think that we’re happy.

  Before

  Before the gate has been closed,

  before the last question is posed,

  before I am transposed.

  Before the weeds fill the gardens,

  before there are no more pardons,

  before the concrete hardens.

  Before all the flute-holes are covered,

  before things are locked in the cupboard,

  before the rules are discovered.

  Before the conclusion is planned,

  before God closes his hand,

  before we have nowhere to stand.

  And as Far as Abu Ghosh

  And as far as Abu Ghosh we were silent

  and as far as old age I will love you

  at the foot of the hill of horrors,

  in the den of the winds. And in Sha’ar Ha-Gai

  the angels of the three religions stepped down into

  the road. Faith in one god is still heavy. And with words

  of pain I must describe the fig trees

  and what happened to me, which wasn’t my fault. Sand

  was blown into my eyes and became tears. And in Ramla

  small planes were parked, and large nameless dead. The scent

  of orange groves touched my blood. My blood looked

  over its shoulder to see who touched. Winds, like actors, began

  to put on their costumes again so that they could act before us,

  their masks of house and mountain and woods,

  makeup of sunset and night.

  From there the other roads began.

  And my heart was covered with dreams, like my shiny

  shoes, which were covered with dust.

  For dreams too are a long road

  whose end I will never reach.

  You Too Got Tired

  You too got tired of being an advertisement

  for our world, so that angels could see: yes it’s pretty, earth.

  Relax. Take a rest from smiling. And without complaint

  allow the sea-breeze to lift the corners of your mouth.

  You won’t object; your eyes too, like flying paper,

  are flying. The fruit has fallen from the sycamore tree.

  How do you say to love in the dialect of water?

  In the language of earth, what part of speech are we?

  Here is the street. What sense does it finally make:

  any mound, a last wind. What prophet would sing. . . .

  And at night, from out of my sleep, you begin to talk.

  And how shall I answer you. And what shall I bring.

  The Place Where We Are Right

  From the place where we are right

  flowers will never grow

  in the spring.

  The place where we are right

  is hard and trampled

  like a yard.

  But doubts and loves

  dig up the world

  like a mole, a plow.

  And a whisper will be heard in the place

  where the ruined

  house once stood.

  Mayor

  It’s sad to be

  the mayor of Jerusalem—

  it’s terrible.

  How can a man be mayor of such a city?

  What can he do with it?

  Build and build and build.

  And at night the stones of the mountains crawl down

  and surround the stone houses,

  like wolves coming to howl at the dogs,

  who have become the slaves of men.

  Resurrection

  Afterward they will get up

  all together, and with a sound of chairs scraping

  they will face the narrow exit.

  And their clothes are crumpled

  and covered with dust and cigarette ashes

  and their hand discovers in the inside pocket

  a ticket stub from a very previous season.

  And their faces are still crisscrossed

  with God’s will.

  And their eyes are red from so much sleeplessness

  under the ground.

  And right away, questions:

  What time is it?

  Where did you put mine?

  When? When?

  And one of them can be seen in an ancient

  scanning of the sky, to see if rain.

  Or a woman,

  with an age-old gesture, wipes her eyes

  and lifts the heav
y hair

  at the back of her neck.

  From Summer or Its End

  You washed the fruit.

  You murdered the bacteria.

  On the chair: a watch and a dress.

  In the bed: us,

  without any of these

  and each for the other.

  And if it weren’t for our names

  we would have been completely naked.

  It was marvelous, the dream on

  the table.

  We left the fruit

  forever till the next day.

  And one of these evenings

  I’ll have a lot to say about

  everything that remains and is kept inside us.

  After midnight, when our words began

  to influence the world,

  I put my hand on your forehead:

  your thoughts were smaller than the palm of my hand,

  but I knew this was a mistake,

  like the mistake of the hand that covers

  the sun.

  Last to dry was the hair.

  When we were already far from the sea,

  when words and salt, which had merged on us,

  separated from one another with a sigh,

  and your body no longer showed

  signs of a terrible ancientness.

  And in vain we had forgotten a few things on the beach,

  so that we would have an excuse to return.

  We didn’t return.

  And these days I remember the days

  that have your name on them, like a name on a ship,

  and how we saw through two open doors

  one man who was thinking, and how we looked at the clouds

  with the ancient gaze we inherited from our fathers,

  who waited for rain,

  and how at night, when the world cooled off,

  your body kept its warmth for a long time,

  like the sea.

  Like the imprint of our bodies,

  not a sign will remain that we were here.

  The world closes behind us,

  the sand is smoothed out again.

  And already on the calendar there are dates

  you will no longer exist in,

  already a wind bringing clouds

  that won’t rain on us.

  And your name is on the passenger list of

  ships and in the guest books

  of hotels whose very names

  deaden the heart.

  The three languages that I know,

  all the colors that I see and dream,

  won’t help me.

  If with a bitter mouth you speak

  sweet words, the world will not grow sweet

  and will not grow bitter.

  And it is written in the book that we shall not fear.

  And it is written that we too shall change,

  like the words,

  in future and in past,

  in plural and in loneliness.

  And soon, in the coming nights,

  we will appear, like wandering actors,

  each in the other’s dream

  and in the dreams of strangers whom we didn’t know together.

  In the Full Severity of Mercy

  Count them.

  You are able to count them. They

  are not like the sand on the seashore. They

  are not innumerable like the stars. They are like lonely people.

  On the corner or in the street.

  Count them. See them

  seeing the sky through ruined houses.

  Go out through the stones and come back. What

  will you come back to? But count them, for they

  do their time in dreams

  and they walk around outside and their hopes are unbandaged

  and gaping, and they will die of them.

  Count them.

  Too soon they learned to read the terrible

  writing on the wall. To read and write on

  other walls. And the feast continues in silence.

  Count them. Be present, for they

  have already used up all the blood and there’s still not enough,

  as in a dangerous operation, when one

  is exhausted and beaten like ten thousand. For who is

  the judge, and what is the judgment,

  unless it be in the full sense of the night

  and in the full severity of mercy.

  Too Many

  Too many olive trees in the valley,

  too many stones on the slope.

  Too many dead, too little

  earth to cover them all.

  And I must return to the landscapes painted

  on the bank notes

  and to my father’s face on the coins.

  Too many memorial days, too little

  remembering. My friends have

  forgotten what they learned when they were young.

  And my girlfriend lies in a hidden place

  and I am always outside, food for hungry winds.

  Too much weariness, too few eyes

  to contain it. Too many clocks,

  too little time. Too many oaths

  on the Bible, too many highways, too few

  ways where we can truly go: each to his destiny.

  Too many hopes

  that ran away from their masters.

  Too many dreamers. Too few dreams

  whose interpretation would change the history of the world

  like Pharaoh’s dreams.

  My life closes behind me. And I am outside, a dog

  for the cruel, blind wind that always

  pushes at my back. I am well trained: I rise and sit

  and wait to lead it through the streets

  of my life, which could have been my true life.

  Poem for Arbor Day

  Children are planting their shoots

  that will become the forest

  they’ll get lost in, terribly, when they grow up.

  And they count with numbers

  that will shatter their whole nights

  to make them illuminated and outside,

  sleepless, yearless.

  The almond tree is in bloom

  and it smells the smell of

  humans as they walk

  in the sweat of the fear of their living

  for the first time.

  And their voice will carry their joy, like a porter who carries

  an expensive chair, not his, to the strange house,

  and puts it down there in the rooms

  and leaves, alone.

  Jacob and the Angel

  Just before dawn she sighed and held him

  that way, and defeated him.

  And he held her that way, and defeated her,

  and both of them knew that a hold

  brings death.

  They agreed to do without names.

  But in the first light

  he saw her body,

  which remained white in the places

  the swimsuit had covered, yesterday.

  Then someone called her suddenly from above,

  twice.

  The way you call a little girl from playing

  in the yard.

  And he knew her name; and let her go.

  Here

  Here, underneath the kites that the children are flying

  and the ones the telephone lines snatched last year, I stand

  with the strong branches of my quiet decisions that have

  long since grown from me and the birds of the small hesitation

  in my heart and the boulders of the huge hesitation at my feet

  and my two twin eyes, one of which is always

  busy and the other always in love. And my gray pants

  and my green sweater, and my face absorbing colors

  and reflecting colors; and I don’t know what else

  I return and receive and project and reject

  and how I was a market
for many things.

  Import-export. Border checkpoint. Crossroads.

  Division of waters, of the dead. The meeting-place. The parting-place.

  And the wind comes through a treetop and lingers

  in every leaf; but still,

  how it passes without stopping

  while we come and stay a little and then fall.

  And as between sisters, there is much resemblance between us and the world:

  thighs and mountainside. A distant thought

  looks like the deed that grew here in the flesh and on the mountain,

  looks like the cypresses that happened, dark, in the mountain range.

  The circle closes. I am its buckle.

  And before I discovered that my hard fathers

  are soft on the inside, they died.

  And all the generations that came before me are many acrobats

  mounted on one another in the circus,

  and usually I am the one on the bottom

  while all of them, a heavy load, stand on my shoulders,

  and sometimes I am on the top: one hand lifted

  to the roof; and the applause in the arena below

  is my flesh and my reward.

  Elegy on an Abandoned Village

  1

  The wine of August was spilled on the face of the girl, but

  the destruction was sober. Thick wooden beams stuck out

  from the life of forgotten people; and a distant love

  hurled itself, echoing like thunder, into the ravine.

  And slowly the valleys rose to the mountain, in the midday

  hours, and we were almost sad. And like some stranger

  in a strange city, who reads in a book of addresses and names,

  I stand and choose a hotel, temporary: here.

  2

  The enormous snow was set down far away. Sometimes

  I must use my love as the only way to describe it,

  and must hire the wind to demonstrate the wailing of women.

  It’s hard for stones that roll from season to season

  to remember the dreamers and the whisperers in the grass,

  who fell in their love. And like a man who keeps shaking

  his wrist when his watch stops: Who is shaking us? Who?

  3

  The wind brought voices from far away, like an infant

  in her arms. The wind never stops. There, standing,

  are the power-plants that discovered our weakness when

  we needed to appear strong, needed to make

  a decision in the dark, without a mirror or a light.