The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (21 page)

without a mirror, facing me,

a psalm: you’ve shampooed your hair, an entire

forest of pine trees is filled with yearning on your head.

Calmness inside and calmness outside

have hammered your face between them to a tranquil copper.

The pillow on your bed is your spare brain,

tucked under your neck for remembering and dreaming.

The earth is trembling beneath us, love.

Lets lie fastened together, a double safety-lock.

The Diameter of the Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

with four dead and eleven wounded.

And around these, in a larger circle

of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

and one graveyard.
But the young woman

who was buried in the city she came from,

at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

enlarges the circle considerably,

and the solitary man mourning her death

at the distant shores of a country far across the sea

includes the entire world in the circle.

And I won’t even mention the howl of orphans

that reaches up to the throne of God and

beyond, making

a circle with no end and no God.

When I Banged My Head on the Door

When I banged my head on the door, I screamed,

“My head, my head,” and I screamed, “Door, door,”

and I didn’t scream “Mama” and I didn’t scream “God.”

And I didn’t prophesy a world at the End of Days

where there will be no more heads and doors.

When you stroked my head, I whispered,

“My head, my head,” and I whispered, “Your hand, your hand,’

and I didn’t whisper “Mama” or “God.”

And I didn’t have miraculous visions

of hands stroking heads in the heavens

as they split wide open.

Whatever I scream or say or whisper is only

to console myself: My head, my head.

Door, door.
Your hand, your hand.

You Carry the Weight of Heavy Buttocks

You carry the weight of heavy buttocks,

but your eyes are clear.

Around your waist a wide belt that won’t protect you.

You’re made of the kind of materials that slow down

the process of joy

and its pain.

I’ve already taught my penis

to say your name

like a trained parakeet.

And you’re not even impressed.
As if

you didn’t hear.

What else should I have done for you?

All I have left now is your name,

completely independent,

like an animal:

it eats out of my hand

and lies down at night

curled up in my dark brain.

Advice for Good Love

Advice for good love: don’t love a woman

from far away.
Choose one from nearby

the way a sensible house will choose local stones

that have frozen in the same cold and baked

in the same scalding sun.

Take the one with the golden wreath around

the dark pupil of her eye, she has some

knowledge about your death.
And love her also

in the midst of ruin

the way Samson took honey from the lion’s carcass.

And advice for bad love: with the love

left over from the one before

make a new woman for yourself, and then with

what’s left of her

make yourself a new love,

and go on that way

till in the end you are left with

nothing at all.

You Are So Small and Slight in the Rain

You are so small and slight in the rain.
A small target

for the raindrops, for the dust in summer,

and for bomb fragments too.
Your belly is slack,

not like the tight flat skin of a drum: the flabbiness

of the third generation.
Your grandfather, the pioneer,

drained the swamps.
Now the swamps have their revenge.

You’re filled with a madness that pulls people down,

that seethes in a fury of colors.

What are you going to do now?
You’ll collect loves

like stamps.
You’ve got doubles and no one

will trade with you.
And you’ve got damaged ones.

Your mother’s curse broods at your side like a strange bird.

You resemble that curse.

Your room is empty.
And each night your bed

is made up again.
That’s true damnation

for a bed: to have no one sleeping in it,

not a wrinkle, not a stain, like the cursed

summer sky.

A Man Like That on a Bald Mountain in Jerusalem

A man like that on a bald mountain in Jerusalem:

a scream pries his mouth open, a wind

tears at the skin of his cheeks and reins him in,

like a bit in an animal’s mouth.

This is his language of love: “
Be fruitful and multiply
—

a sticky business,

like candy in a child’s fingers.
It draws flies.

Or like a congealed tube of shaving cream, split and half-empty.”

And these are his love-threats: “On your back!
You!
With all

your hands and feet and your trembling antennae!

Just you wait, I’ll shove it into you

till your grandchildren’s children.”

And she answers back: “They’ll bite you in there,

deep inside me.
They’ll gnaw you to bits,

those last descendants.”

“But a man is not a horse,” said the old shoemaker

and worked on my stiff new shoes

till they were soft.
And suddenly

I had to cry

from all that love poured out over me.

When a Man’s Far Away from His Country

When a man’s far away from his country for a long time,

his language becomes more precise, more pure,

like precise summer clouds against a blue background,

clouds that don’t ever rain.

That’s how people who used to be lovers

still speak the language of love sometimes—

sterile, emptied of everything, unchanging,

not arousing any response.

But I, who have stayed here, dirty my mouth

and my lips and tongue.
In my words

is the souls garbage, the trash of lust,

and dust and sweat.
In this dry land even the water I drink

between screams and mumblings of desire

is urine recycled back to me

through a complicated pipework.

The Eve of Rosh Hashanah

The eve of Rosh Hashanah.
At the house that’s being built,

a man makes a vow: not to do anything wrong in it,

only to love.

Sins that were green last spring

dried out over the summer.
Now they’re whispering.

So I washed my body and clipped my fingernails,

the last good deed a man can do for himself

while he’s still alive.

What is man?
In the daytime he untangles into words

what night turns into a heavy coil.

What do we do to one another—

a son to his father, a father to his son?

And between him and death there’s nothing

but a wall of words

like a battery of agitated lawyers.

And whoever uses people as handles or as rungs of a ladder

will soon find himself hugging a stick of wood

and holding a severed hand and wiping his tears

with a potsherd.

I’ve Already Been Weaned

I’ve already been weaned from the curse of Adam, the First Man.

The fiery revolving sword is a long way off,

glinting in the sun like a propeller.

I already like the taste of salty sweat

on my bread, mixed with dust and death.

But the soul I was given

is still like a tongue that

remembers sweet tastes between the teeth.

And now I’m the Second Man and already

they’re driving me out of the Garden of the Great Curse

where I managed fine after Eden.

Under my feet a small cave is growing,

perfectly fitted to the shape of my body.

I’m a man of shelter: the Third Man.

In the Garden, at the White Table

In the garden, at the white table,

two dead men were sitting in the midday heat.

A branch stirred above them.
One of them pointed out

things that have never been.

The other spoke of a great love

with a special device to keep it functioning

even after death.

They were, if one may say so, a cool

and pleasant phenomenon

on that hot dry day, without sweat

and without a sound.
And only

when they got up to go

did I hear them, like the ringing of porcelain

when it’s cleared off the table.

From the Book of Esther I Filtered the Sediment

From the Book of Esther I filtered the sediment

of vulgar joy, and from the Book of Jeremiah

the howl of pain in the guts.
And from

the Song of Songs the endless

search for love, and from Genesis the dreams

and Cain, and from Ecclesiastes

the despair, and from the Book of Job: Job.

And with what was left, I pasted myself a new Bible.

Now I live censored and pasted and limited and in peace.

A woman asked me last night on the dark street

how another woman was

who’d already died.
Before her time—and not

in anyone else’s time either.

Out of a great weariness I answered,

“She’s fine, she’s fine.”

So I Went Down to the Ancient Harbor

So I went down to the ancient harbor: human actions

bring the sea closer to the shore, but other actions

push it back.
How should the sea know

what it is they want,

which pier holds tight like love

and which pier lets go.

In the shallow water lies a Roman column.

But this isn’t its final resting place.
Even if

they carry it off and put it in a museum

with a little plaque telling what it is, even that won’t be

its final resting place: it will go on falling

through floors and strata and other ages.

But now a wind in the tamarisks

fans a last red glow on the faces of those who sit here

like the embers of a dying campfire.
After this, night

and whiteness.

The salt eats everything and I eat salt

till it eats me too.

And whatever was given to me is taken away

and given again, and what was thirsty has drunk its fill

and what drank its fill has long since rested in death.

Now the Lifeguards Have All Gone Home

Now the lifeguards have all gone home.
The bay