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A Touch of Grace: Yehuda Amichai
The following poems by the late Jerusalem poet, Yehuda Amichai, were among those published in "A Touch of Grace," published by the Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, 2000.
At times Jerusalem is a city of knives,
And even the hopes for peace are sharp enough to slice into
The harsh reality and they become dulled or broken.
The church bells try so hard to ring out calm, round tones,
But they become heavy like a pestle pounding on a mortar,
Heavy, muffled, downtrodding voices. And the cantor
And the muezzin try to sing sweetly
But in the end the sharp wail bursts forth:
O Lord, God of us all, The Lord is One
One, one, one, one.
Translated by Irena Gordon
(The Hebrew word for "one" also means "sharp" in Hebrew)
Love of Jerusalem
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 dig into the sky,
Here they sit and there they walk
Here they hate and there they love.
But he who loves Jerusalem
By the tourist book or the prayer book
is like one who loves a women
By a manual of sex positions.
Translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav
Jerusalem
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 many flags,
They have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy.
Translated by Irena Gordon
My Child Wafts Peace
My child wafts peace.
When I lean over him,
It is not just the smell of soap.
All the people were children wafting peace.
(And in the whole land, not even one
Millstone remained that still turned).
Oh, the land torn like clothes
That can't be mended.
Hard, lonely fathers even in the cave of the Makhpela*
Childless silence.
My child wafts peace.
His mother's womb promised him
What God cannot
Promise us.
Translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav
* The traditional burial place in Hebron of Abraham and the other Patriarchs and Matriarchs of Israel.
Yehuda Amichai was born in Würzberg, Germany, in 1924 and died in Jerusalem in 2001. Israel's most widely read and loved poet, his works have been translated into more than 20 languages. Among many awards and honorary doctorates, he received the Israel Prize for Literature in 1982.
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