from Jerusalem 1967 - Yehuda Amichai
In this summer of wide-open-eyed hatred
and blind love, I'm begining to belive again
in all the little things that will fill
the holes left by the shells: soil, a bit of grass,
perhaps, after the rains, small insects of every kind.
I think of the children growing up half in the ethics of their fathers
and half in the science of war.
The tears now penetrate into my eyes from the outside
and my ears invent, every day, the footsteps of
the messenger of good tidings.
Translated from the Hebrew by Stephen Mitchell
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (no comments) ... comment
A Small Collection of Snapshots
[1] Tracing
A boy's lithe body spears the muddy stream, brown dissolving into brown.
The setting rays have traced this image over the retinas just as I learnt in those years, among other things,
How to multiply coins by rubbing a pencil Over a piece of paper laid flat on their faces.
...
[2] Talkies
Before today all the moving images were mimes, ventriloquists with eyes, noses, and mouths with missing tongues
Who spoke in the language of motion, who were players of the body's silence
And then this sudden speech. All at once. All of a sudden.
...
[3] Self Prophesy
I want the walls of my heart to turn green today,
As dark a green as the forest's shadow falling into the lake
For tomorrow I will find myself in a desert that will have no ending.
...
What does one do when the heart is sick, the eyes tired, the brain dead to work, the body tired, yet sleep distant? Listen to this music, look at photos in this book, and attempt to scribble mild pain out of the bones.
For as the preface of the Shahid Ali's poem put it:
'What have you known of loss That makes you different from other men?'
- Gilgamesh.
Nothing yet. Nothing yet.
My Poems
... link (no comments) ... comment