Half The People In The World

Half the people in the world love the other half,

half the people hate the other half.

Must I because of this half and that half go wandering

and changing ceaselessly like rain in its cycle,

must I sleep among rocks, and grow rugged like

the trunks of olive trees,

and hear the moon barking at me,

and camouflage my love with worries,

and sprout like frightened grass between the railroad

tracks,

and live underground like a mole,

and remain with roots and not with branches, and not

feel my cheek against the cheek of angels, and

love in the first cave, and marry my wife

beneath a canopy of beams that support the earth,

and act out my death, always till the last breath and

the last words  and without ever understanding,

and put flagpoles on top of my house and a bob shelter

underneath.  And go out on rads made only for

returning and go through all the appalling

stations—cat,stick,fire,water,butcher,

between the kid and the angel of death?

Half the people love,

half the people hate.

And where is my place between such well-matched halves,

and through what crack will I see the white housing

projects of my dreams and the bare foot runners

on the sands or, at least, the waving of a girl's

kerchief, beside the mound?

Translated by Chana Bloch And Stephen Mitchell