The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
Page 18
make a great joyful light.
The Course of a Life
Till eight days like any happy fly,
on the eighth, a Jew
to be circumcised,
to learn pain without words.
In childhood, a Catholic
for the dances of ritual and its games,
the splendor of fear, the glory of sin
and shining things up above,
or a Jew for the commandments of Shalt and Shalt Not.
We begged you, Lord, to divide right from wrong
and instead you divided the waters above the firmament
from those beneath it. We begged
for the knowledge of good and evil, and you gave us
all kinds of rules and regulations
like the rules of soccer
for the permitted and the forbidden, for reward and punishment,
for defeat and victory, for remembering and forgetting.
A young man believes in nothing and loves everything,
worships idols and stars, girls, hope, despair.
A Protestant at the age when toughening sets in,
the cheek and the mouth, wheeling and dealing, upper
and lower jaw, commerce and industry.
But after midnight, everyone’s the muezzin
of his own life, calling out from the top of himself
as if from the top of a minaret,
crying parched from the pressure of the desert
about the failure of flesh and of blood,
howling insatiable lusts.
Afterward, a motley crowd, you and I, religions
of oblivion and religions of memory,
hot baths, sunsets and a quiet drunkenness
till the body is soul and the soul, body.
And toward the end, again a Jew,
served up on a white pillow to the sandak
after the pain, from him to a good woman
and from one good woman to another,
the taste of sweet wine on his lips, and the taste
of pain between his legs.
And the last eight days without
consciousness, without knowledge, without belief
like any animal, like any stone,
like any happy fly.
What Kind of Man
“What kind of man are you?” people ask me.
I am a man with a complex network of pipes in my soul,
sophisticated machineries of emotion
and a precisely-monitored memory system
of the late twentieth century,
but with an old body from ancient days
and a God more obsolete even than my body.
I am a man for the surface of the earth.
Deep places, pits and holes in the ground
make me nervous. Tall buildings
and mountaintops terrify me.
I am not like a piercing fork
nor a cutting knife nor a scooping spoon
nor a flat, wily spatula that sneaks in from underneath.
At most I’m a heavy and clumsy pestle
that mashes good and evil together
for the sake of a little flavor,
a little fragrance.
Guideposts don’t tell me where to go.
I conduct my business quietly, diligently,
as if carrying out a long will that began to be written
the moment I was born.
Now I am standing on the sidewalk,
weary, leaning on a parking meter.
I can stand here for free, my own man.
I’m not a car, I’m a human being,
a man-god, a god-man
whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.
The Greatest Desire
Instead of singing Hallelujah, a curtain
fluttering from an open window.
Instead of saying Amen, a door or a shutter closing.
Instead of the Vision of the End of Days
the flapping of banners on an empty street after the holiday.
Reflections slowly take over the house,
whatever glimmers in mirror and wineglass.
I saw broken glass flashing in the sun
in the Judean desert, celebrating a wedding
without bride or bridegroom, a pure celebration.
I saw a big beautiful parade going by in the street,
I saw policemen standing between the spectators and the parade,
their faces toward those who were watching,
their backs to whatever was passing by
with fanfare and joy and flags.
Maybe to live like that.
But the greatest desire of all is to be
in the dream of another person.
To feel a slight pull, like reins tugging. To feel
a heavy pull, like chains.
Two Disappeared into a House
Two disappeared into a house.
The marble of the stairs comforts the feet of those who ascend
as it comforts the feet of those who descend,
like the marble that comforts the dead in their graves.
And the higher the stairs, the less worn they are,
the highest are like new
for the souls that leave no footprints.
Like people who live in the high country:
when they speak, their voices grow more songful
up to the singing of the heavenly angels.
Two disappeared into a house
turn on a light. Then turn it off.
The stairs go out from the roof into
the space of night
as in a building that was never finished.
I Know a Man
I know a man
who photographed the view he saw
from the window of the room where he made love
and not the face of the woman he loved there.
Between
Where will we be when these flowers turn into fruit
in the narrow between, when the flower is no longer a flower
and the fruit not yet a fruit. And what a wonderful between we made
for each other between body and body.
A between of eyes, between waking and sleep.
A twilight betweenlight, not day and not night.
How your spring dress so quickly became a flag of summer
that flutters already in the first wind of fall.
How my voice was no longer my voice
but like a prophecy, almost.
What a wonderful between we were, like earth
in the clefts of the wall, a small stubborn earth
for the valiant moss, for the thorny caper bush
whose bitter fruit
sweetened what we ate together.
These are the last days of books.
Next come the last days of words. Some day
you will understand.
Summer Evening in the Jerusalem Mountains
An empty soda can on a rock
lit by the last rays of the sun.
The child throws stones at it,
the can falls, the stone falls,
the sun goes down. Among things that go down
and fall, I look like one that rises,
a latter-day Newton who cancels the laws of nature.
My penis like a pine cone
closed on many cells of seed.
I hear the children playing. Wild grapes too
are children and children’s children.
The voices too are sons and great-grandsons
of voices forever lost in their joy.
Here in these mountains, hope belongs to the landscape
like the water holes. Even the ones with no water
still belong to the landscape like hope.
So I open my mouth and sing into the world.
I have a mouth, the world doesn’t.
It has to use mine if it wants
to sing into me. I am equal t
o the world,
more than equal.
At the Beach
Footprints that met in the sand were erased.
The people who left them were erased as well
by the wind of their being no more.
The few became many and the many will be without end
like the sand on the seashore. I found an envelope
with an address on the front and the back.
But inside it was empty and silent. The letter
was read somewhere else, like a soul that left the body.
That happy melody in the big white house last night
is now full of longing and full of sand
like the bathing suits hanging on a line between the wooden poles.
Water birds shriek when they see land
and people when they see tranquillity.
Oh my children, children of my mind
that I made with all my body and all my soul,
now they are only the children of my mind
and I am alone on this beach
with the low shivering grasses of the dunes.
That shiver is their language. That shiver
is my language.
We have a common language.
The Sea and the Shore
The sea and the shore are always next to each other.
Both want to learn to speak, to learn to say
one word only. The sea wants to say “shore”
and the shore “sea.” They draw closer,
millions of years, to speech, to saying
that single word. When the sea says “shore”
and the shore “sea,”
redemption will come to the world,
the world will return to chaos.
Autumn Is Near and the Memory of My Parents
Soon it will be autumn. The last fruits ripen
and people walk on roads they haven’t taken before.
The old house begins to forgive those who live in it.
Trees darken with age and people grow white.
Soon the rains will come. The smell of rust will be fresh
and delight the heart
like the scent of blossoms in spring.
In the northern countries they say, Most of the leaves
are still on the trees. But here we say,
Most of the words are still on the people.
Our fall season makes other things fall.
Soon it will be autumn. The time has come
to remember my parents.
I remember them like the simple toys of my childhood,
turning in little circles,
humming softly, raising a leg,
waving an arm, moving their heads
from side to side slowly, in the same rhythm,
the spring in their belly and the key in their back.
Then suddenly they stop moving and remain
forever in their last position.
And that is how I remember my parents
and that is how I remember
their words.
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur without my father and mother
is no Yom Kippur.
All that’s left of their blessing hands on my head
is the tremor, like the tremor of an engine
that kept going even after they died.
My mother died only five years ago,
her ease is still pending
between the offices up there and the paperwork down here.
My father, who died long ago, has already risen
in some other place,
not in mine.
Yom Kippur without my father and mother
is no Yom Kippur. Therefore I eat
in order to remember
and drink so I won’t forget,
and I sort out the vows
and classify the oaths by time and size.
During the day we used to shout, Forgive us,
and in the evening, Open the gate to us.
But I say, Forget us, forgo us, leave us alone
when your gate closes and clay is gone.
The last sunlight broke
in the stained glass window of the synagogue.
The sunlight didn’t break, we are broken,
the word “broken” is broken.
Beginning of Autumn in the Hills of Ephraim
At the side of the road that is being paved
a group of workers, huddled together
in the cool of twilight.
The last rays of the sun light up the men
who did what they had to do
with the bulldozer and steamroller that did
what they had to do.
Men and machines together in their faith
that they won’t fall off the planet.
Already the squill has come up in the field
and there are still almonds on the almond tree.
The earth is still warm, like the head of a child
under its hair. A first wind of autumn
passes through Jews and Arabs.
Migratory birds call out to one another:
Look, human beings who stay where they are!
And in the great silence before dark
an airplane crosses the sky
and descends at the edge of the West with a gurgle
like good wine in the throat.
Ruhama
Here in this wadi we lived during the war.
Many years have passed since then, many victories
and many defeats. I have gathered many consolations in my life
and squandered them, many sorrows
that I spilled in vain. I’ve said many things, like the waves
of the sea at Ashkelon in the West
that always keep saying the same thing.
But as long as I live, my soul remembers
and my body slowly ripens in the fires of its life story.
The evening sky lowers like a bugle call over us,
and our lips move like the lips of men in prayer
before there was a god in the world.
Here we would lie by day, and at night
we would go to battle.
The smell of the sand is as it was, and the smell
of the eucalyptus leaves
and the smell of the wind.
And I do now what any memory dog does:
I howl quietly
and piss a boundary of remembrance around me
so no one else can enter.
Huleikat—The Third Poem about Dicky
In these hills even the oil rigs
are already a memory. Here Dicky fell
who was four years older than I and like a father to me
in times of anguish. Now that I’m older than him
by forty years, I remember him like a young son,
and I an old grieving father.
And you who remember only a face,
don’t forget the outstretched hands
and the legs that run so easily
and the words.
Remember that even the road to terrible battles
always passes by gardens and windows
and children playing and a barking dog.
Remember the fruit that fell and remind it
of the leaves and the branch,
remind the hard thorns
that they were soft and green in springtime,
and don’t forget that the fist, too,
was once the palm of an open hand, and fingers.
The Shore of Ashkelon
Here at the shore of Ashkelon we arrived at
the end of memory
like rivers that reach the sea.
The near past sinks into the far past
and the far past rises from the depths
and overflows the near.
Peace, peace to the near and the far.
Here among the broken idols and pillars,
I wonder how Samson brought down t
he temple
where he stood blind and said: “Let me die
with the Philistines!”
Did he embrace the pillars as in a last love
or with both arms push them away
to be alone in his death.
Fields of Sunflowers
Fields of sunflowers, ripe and withering,
don’t need the warmth of the sun anymore,
they’re brown and wise already. They need
sweet shadow, the inwardness
of death, the interior of a drawer, a sack
deep as the sky. Their world to come
the innermost dark of a dark house,
the inside of a man.
First Rain on a Burned Car
The closeness of life to death
near the corpse of a car at the roadside.
You hear the raindrops on the rusty metal
before you feel them on the skin of your face.
The rains have come, redemption after death.
Rust is more eternal than blood, more beautiful
than the color of flames.
The shock absorbers are calmer than the dead
who won’t quiet down for a long time.
A wind that is time alternates
with a wind that is place, and God
remains down here like a man who thinks
he’s forgotten something, and will stick around
until he remembers.
And at night, like a wondrous melody,
you can hear man and machine
on their slow journey from a red fire
to a black peace and from there to history
to archaeology to the beautiful
strata of geology:
that too is eternity and a deep joy.
Like human sacrifice that became
animal sacrifice, then loud prayer,
then prayer in the heart,
and then no prayer at all.
We Did What We Had To
We did what we had to.
We went out with our children
to gather mushrooms in the forest
we planted ourselves when we were children.
We learned the names of the wildflowers
whose fragrance
was like blood spilled in vain.
We loaded a great love onto little bodies.
We stood enlarged and reduced by turns
in the eyes of the mad god, Holder of the Binoculars,
and in the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness,