Poems by Yehuda Amichai

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Try To Remember Some Details

Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing

of the one you love

so that on the day of loss you'll be able to say: last seen

wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat.

Try to remember some details. For they have no face

and their soul is hidden and their crying

is the same as their laughter,

and their silence and their shouting rise to one height

188

by Yehuda Amichai

A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention

They amputated

Your thighs off my hips.

As far as I'm concerned

They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us

Each from the other.

As far as I'm concerned

They are all engineers. All of them.

169

by Yehuda Amichai

Near The Wall Of A House

Near the wall of a house painted

to look like stone,

I saw visions of God.

A sleepless night that gives others a headache

gave me flowers

opening beautifully inside my brain.

And he who was lost like a dog

will be found like a human being

169

by Yehuda Amichai

The Diameter Of The Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

with four dead and eleven wounded.

And around these, in a larger circle

of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

and one graveyard. But the young woman

who was buried in the city she came from,

at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

167

by Yehuda Amichai

God Full Of Mercy

God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead.

If God was not full of mercy,

Mercy would have been in the world,

Not just in Him.

I, who plucked flowers in the hills

And looked down into all the valleys,

I, who brought corpses down from the hills,

Can tell you that the world is empty of mercy.

187

by Yehuda Amichai

A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life

A man doesn't have time in his life

to have time for everything.

He doesn't have seasons enough to have

a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes

Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,

to laugh and cry with the same eyes,

with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,

142

by Yehuda Amichai

A Dog After Love

After you left me

I let a dog smell at

My chest and my belly. It will fill its nose

And set out to find you.

I hope it will tear the

Testicles of your lover and bite off his penis

Or at least

Will bring me your stockings between his teeth.

139

by Yehuda Amichai

Quick And Bitter

The end was quick and bitter.

Slow and sweet was the time between us,

slow and sweet were the nights

when my hands did not touch one another in despair but in the love

of your body which came

between them.

And when I entered into you

it seemed then that great happiness

132

by Yehuda Amichai

If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,

Then let my right be forgotten.

Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember.

Let my left remember, and your right close

And your mouth open near the gate.

I shall remember Jerusalem

And forget the forest — my love will remember,

Will open her hair, will close my window,

214

by Yehuda Amichai

Forgetting Someone

Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light

in the backyard so it stays lit all the next day

But then it is the light that makes you remember.

Translated by Chana Bloch

131

by Yehuda Amichai

Wildpeace

Not the peace of a cease-fire

not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,

but rather

as in the heart when the excitement is over

and you can talk only about a great weariness.

I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.

And my son plays with a toy gun that knows

how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.

135

by Yehuda Amichai

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 pardons,

before the concrete hardens.

Before all the flute-holes are covered,

before things are locked in then cupboard,

by Yehuda Amichai