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