Yehuda Amichai Poems
A collection of select Yehuda Amichai famous poems that were written by Yehuda Amichai or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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by
Yehuda Amichai
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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.
I, who was King of Salt at the seashore,
Who stood without...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
A precise woman with a short haircut brings order
to my thoughts and my dresser drawers,
moves feelings around like furniture
into a new arrangement.
A woman whose body is cinched at the waist and firmly divided
into upper and lower,
with weather-forecast eyes
of shatterproof glass.
Even her cries of passion follow a certain order,
one after the other:
tame dove, then wild dove,
then peacock, wounded peacock, peacock,...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
There is a street where they sell only red meat
And there is a street where they sell only clothes and perfumes. And there
is a day when I see only cripples and the blind
And those covered with leprosy, and spastics and those with twisted lips.
Here they build a house and there they destroy
Here they dig into the earth
And there they...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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 *****
Or at least
Will bring me your stockings between his teeth....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
I don't Know if history repeats itself
But I do know that you don't.
I remember that city was didvided
Not only between Jews and Arabs,
But Between me and you,
When we were there together.
We made ourselves a womb of dangers
We built ourselves a house of deadening wars
Like men of far north
Who build themselves a safe warm house of deadening ice.
The...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
On a roof in the Old City
Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
The towel of a man who is my enemy,
To wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
A kite.
At the other end of the string,
A child
I can't see
Because of the wall.
We have put up...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
I have become very hairy all over my body.
I'm afraid they'll start hunting me because of my fur.
My multicolored shirt has no meaning of love --
it looks like an air photo of a railway station.
At night my body is open and awake under the blanket,
like eyes under the blindfold of someone to be shot.
Restless I shall wander about;
hungry for...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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,
to make love in war and...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
And we shall not get excited. Because a translator
May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on
Words from man to son, from one tongue
To others' lips, un-
Knowingly, like a father who passes on
The features of his dead father's face
To his son, and he himself is like neither of them. Merely a mediator.
We shall remember the things we held in...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children -- less.
But adults he pities not at all.
He abandons them,
And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours
In the scorching sand
To reach the dressing station,
Streaming with blood.
But perhaps
He will have pity on those who love truly
And take care of them
And shade them
Like a tree over the sleeper on the public...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
The first rain reminds me
Of the rising summer dust.
The rain doesn't remember the rain of yesteryear.
A year is a trained beast with no memories.
Soon you will again wear your harnesses,
Beautiful and embroidered, to hold
Sheer stockings: you
Mare and harnesser in one body.
The white panic of soft flesh
In the panic of a sudden vision
Of ancient saints....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
I know a man
who photographed the view he saw
from the window of the room where he made love
and not the face of the woman he loved there....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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,
will forget my right,
Will forget my left.
If the west wind does...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Out of three or four in the room
One is always standing at the window.
Forced to see the injustice amongst the thorns,
The fires on the hills.
And people who left whole
Are brought home in the evening, like small change.
Out of three or four in the room
One is always standing at the window.
Hair dark above his thoughts.
Behind him, the words, wandering, without...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
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.
A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
Both in their temporary failure.
Our two voices met above
The Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
Neither of us wants the boy or the goat
To get caught in the wheels
Of the "Had Gadya"...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
The little park planted in memory of a boy
who fell in the war begins
to resemble him
as he was twenty eight years ago.
Year by year they look more alike.
His old parents come almost daily
to sit on a bench
and look at him.
And every night the memory in the garden
hums like a little motor.
During the day you can't hear it....Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Memorial day for the war dead. Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you. Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.
Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Before the gate has been closed,
before the last quetion 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,
beore things are locked in then cupboard,
before the rules are discovered.
Before the conclusion is planned,
before God closes his hand,
before we have nowhere to stand....Read more of this...