The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (7 page)

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 heavy 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.