What Kind Of A Person

By Yehuda Amichai

"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me.

I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul,

Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system

Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century,

But with an old body from ancient times

And with a God even older than my body.

I'm a person for the surface of the earth.

Low places, caves and wells

Frighten me. Mountain peaks

And tall buildings scare me.

I'm not like an inserted fork,

Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.

I'm not flat and sly

Like a spatula creeping up from below.

At most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle

Mashing good and bad together

For a little taste

And a little fragrance.

Arrows do not direct me. I conduct

My business carefully and quietly

Like a long will that began to be written

The moment I was born.

s Now I stand at the side of the street

Weary, leaning on a parking meter.

I can stand here for nothing, free.

I'm not a car, I'm a person,

A man-god, a god-man

Whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.