The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (22 page)

is closed and what’s left of the sunlight

is reflected in a piece of broken glass,

as an entire life in the shattered eye of the dying.

A board licked clean is saved from the fate

of becoming furniture.

Half an apple and half a footprint in the sand

are trying to be some whole new thing together,

and a box turning black

resembles a man who’s asleep or dead.

Even God stopped here and didn’t come closer

to the truth.
The mistake that occurs once only

and the single right action

both bring a man peace of mind.

The balance pans have been overturned: now good and evil

are pouring out slowly into a tranquil world.

In the last light, near the rock pool, a few young people

are still warming themselves with the feelings

I once had in this place.

A green stone in the water

seems to be dancing in the ripples with a dead fish,

and a girl’s face emerges from diving,

her wet eyelashes

like the rays of a sun resurrected for the night.

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

and brought back home again.

Love is not the last room: there are others

after it, the whole length of the corridor

that has no end.

You Can Rely on Him

Joy has no parents.
No joy ever

learns from the one before, and it dies without heirs.

But sorrow has a long tradition,

handed down from eye to eye, from heart to heart.

What did I learn from my father?
To cry fully, to laugh out loud

and to pray three times a day.

And what did I learn from my mother?
To close my mouth and my collar,

my closet, my dream, my suitcase, to put everything

back in its place and to pray

three times a day.

Now I’ve recovered from that lesson.
The hair of my head

is cropped all the way around, like a soldier’s in the Second World War,

so my ears hold up not only

my skull, but the entire sky.

And now they’re saying about me: “You can rely on him.”

So that’s what I’ve come to!
I’ve sunk that low!

Only those who really love me

know better.

You Mustn’t Show Weakness

You mustn’t show weakness

and you’ve got to have a tan.

But sometimes I feel like the thin veils

of Jewish women who faint

at weddings and on Yom Kippur.

You mustn’t show weakness

and you’ve got to make a list

of all the things you can load

in a baby carriage without a baby.

This is the way things stand now:

if I pull out the stopper

after pampering myself in the bath,

I’m afraid that all of Jerusalem, and with it the whole world,

will drain out into the huge darkness.

In the daytime I lay traps for my memories

and at night I work in the Balaam Mills,

turning curse into blessing and blessing into curse.

And don’t ever show weakness.

Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself

without anyone noticing.
I’m like an ambulance

on two legs, hauling the patient

inside me to Last Aid

with the wailing cry of a siren,

and people think it’s ordinary speech.

Lost Objects

From announcements in the paper and on bulletin boards

I find out about things that have gotten lost.

That’s how I know what people owned

and what they love.

Once my head sank down, tired, on my hairy chest

and I found the smell of my father there

again, after many years.

My memories are like a man

who’s forbidden to return to Czechoslovakia

or who’s afraid to return to Chile.

Sometimes I see once again

the white vaulted room

with the telegram

on the table.

Forgetting Someone

Forgetting someone is like

forgetting to turn off the light in the back yard

so it stays lit all the next day.

But then it’s the light

that makes you remember.

“The Rustle of History’s Wings,” as They Used to Say Then

Not far from the railroad tracks, near the fickle post office,

I saw a ceramic plaque on an old house with the name of

the son of a man whose girlfriend I took away

years ago: she left him for me

and his son was born to another woman and didn’t know

about any of this.

Those were days of great love and great destiny:

the British imposed a curfew on the city and locked us up

for a sweet togetherness in our room,

guarded by well-armed soldiers.

For five shillings I changed the Jewish name of my ancestors

to a proud Hebrew name that matched hers.

That whore ran away to America, married

some spice broker—cinnamon, pepper, cardamom—

and left me alone with my new name and with the war.

‘The rustle of history’s wings,” as they used to say then,

which almost finished me off in battle,

blew gently over her face in her safe address.

And with the wisdom of war, they told me to carry

my first-aid bandage over my heart,

the foolish heart that still loved her

and the wise heart that would forget.

1978 Reunion of Palmach Veterans at Ma’ayan Harod

Here at the foot of Mount Gilboa we met,

mediums and witches,

each with the spirits of his own dead.

There were faces that only days later

exploded in our memory with the blinding light

of a great recognition.
But then it was too late

to go back and say: So it was you.

And there were closed faces, like the jammed mailboxes

of people who’ve been away from home for a long time:

the weeping unwept, the laughter unlaughed,

unspoken words.

And there was a path, toward evening, between the orchards,

along the line of cypresses.
But we didn’t take it

into the fragrant darkness that brings back memories

and makes you forget.

Like guests who linger at the door when the party is over,

we lingered thirty years and more,

unwilling to leave and unable to return,

the hosts already lying asleep in their darkness.

Goodbye all of you, the living and the dead together.

Even a flag at half-mast flutters happily enough

when the wind blows.
Even longing is a bunch of sweet grapes

from which wine is pressed for feast and celebration.

And you, my few friends, go now, each of you,

go lead your flocks of memories

to pastures

where there is no remembrance.

An Eternal Window

In a garden I once heard

a song or an ancient blessing.

And above the dark trees

a window is always lit, in memory

of the face that looked out of it,

and that face too

was in memory of another

lit window.

There Are Candles That Remember

There are candles that remember for a full twenty-four hours,

that’s what the label says.
And candles that remember

for eight hours, and eternal candles

that guarantee a man will be remembered by his children.

I’m older than most of the houses in this country, and most of its forests,

which are taller than I am.
But I’m still the child I was,

carrying a bowl full of precious liquid from place to place

as in a dream, careful not to spill a drop,

afraid I’ll be punished, and hoping for a kiss when I arrive.

Some of my father’s friends are still living in the city,

scattered about like antiquities without a plaque or an explanation.

Late in my life I had a daughter who will be twenty-two

in the year 2000.
Her name

is Emanuella, which means “May God be with us!”

My soul is experienced and built like mountain terraces

against erosion.
I’m a holdfast,

a go-between, a buckle-man.

On the Day My Daughter Was Born No One Died

On the day my daughter was born not a single person

died in the hospital, and at the entrance gate

the sign said: “Today
kohanim
are permitted to enter.”

And it was the longest day of the year.

In my great joy

I drove with my friend to the hills of Sha’ar Ha-Gai.

We saw a bare, sick pine tree, nothing on it but a lot of pine cones.
Zvi said trees that are about to die produce more pine cones than healthy trees.
And I said to him: That was a poem and you didn’t realize it.
Even though you’re a man of the exact sciences, you’ve made a poem.
And he answered: And you, though
you’re a man of dreams, have made an exact little girl with all the exact instruments for her life.

All These Make a Dance Rhythm

When a man grows older, his life becomes less dependent

on the rhythms of time and its seasons.
Darkness sometimes

falls right in the middle of an embrace

of two people at a window; or summer comes to an end

during a love affair, while the love goes on

into autumn; or a man dies suddenly in the middle of speaking

and his words remain there on either side; or the same rain

falls on the one who says goodbye and goes

and on the one who says it and stays; or a single thought

wanders through cities and villages and many countries

in the head of a man who is traveling.

All these make a strange

dance rhythm.
But I don’t know who’s dancing to it

or who’s calling the tune.

A while back, I found an old photo of myself

with a little girl who died long ago.

We were sitting together, hugging as children do,

in front of a wall where a pear tree stood: her one hand

on my shoulder, and the other one free, reaching out from the dead

to me, now.

And I knew that the hope of the dead is their past,

and God has taken it.

In the Morning It Was Still Night

In the morning it was still night and the lights were on

when we rose from happiness like people

who rise from the dead,

and like them in an instant each of us remembered

a former life.
That’s why we separated.

You put on an old-fashioned blouse of striped silk

and a tight skirt, a stewardess of goodbyes

from some earlier generation,