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 and say Mama. A peace without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares, without words, without the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be light, floating, like lazy white foam. A little rest for the wounds— who speaks of healing? (And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation to the next, as in a relay race: the baton never falls.) Let it come like wildflowers, suddenly, because the field must have it: wildpeace.

I passed by the school where I studied as a boy and said in my heart: here I learned certain things and didn't learn others. All my life I have loved in vain the things I didn't learn. I am filled with knowledge, I know all about the flowering of the tree of knowledge, the shape of its leaves, the function of its root system, its pests and parasites. I'm an expert on the botany of good and evil, I'm still studying it, I'll go on studying till the day I die. I stood near the school building and looked in. This is the room where we sat and learned. The windows of a classroom always open to the future, but in our innocence we thought it was only landscape we were seeing from the window. The schoolyard was narrow, paved with large stones. I remember the brief tumult of the two of us near the rickety steps, the tumult that was the beginning of a first great love. Now it outlives us, as if in a museum, like everything else in Jerusalem.

On Friday, at twilight of a summer day While the smells of food and prayer rose from every house And the sound of the Sabbath angels’ wings was in the air, While still a child I started to lie to my father: “I went to another synagogue.” I don’t know if he believed me or not But the taste of the lie was good and sweet on my tongue And in all the houses that night Hymns rose up along with lies To celebrate the Sabbath. And in all the houses that night Sabbath angels died like flies in a lamp, And lovers put mouth to mouth, Blew each other up until they floated upward, Or burst. And since then the lie has been good and sweet on my tongue And since then I always go to another synagogue. And my father returned the lie when he died: “I’ve gone to another life.”

Inside the brand-new museum there’s an old synagogue. Inside the synagogue is me. Inside me my heart. Inside my heart a museum. Inside the museum a synagogue, inside it me, inside me my heart, inside my heart a museum

They amputated Your thighs off my hips. As far as I'm concerned They are all surgeons. All of them. They dismantle 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.

Like our  bodies' imprint Not a sign will remain that we were in this place. The world closes behind us, The sand straightens itself. Dates are already in view In which you no longer exist, Already a wind blows clouds Which will not rain on us both. And your name is already in the passenger lists of ships, And in the registers of hotels, Whose names alone Deaden the heart. The three languages I know, All the colors in which I see and dream: None will help me.

On summer nights I sleep naked in Jerusalem. My bed stands on the brink of a deep valley without rolling down into it. In the daytime I walk around with the Ten Commandments on my lips like an old tune someone hums to himself. Oh touch me, touch me, good woman! That’s not a scar you feel under my shirt, that’s a letter of recommendation, folded up tight, from my father: “All the same, he’s a good boy, and full of love.” I remember my father waking me for early prayers. He would do it by gently stroking my forehead, not by tearing away the blanket. Since then I love him even more. And as his reward, may he be wakened gently and with love on the Day of the Resurrection.

LISTEN TO THE RADIO PLAY JOE, a doctoral candidate in literature RACHEL, his fiancée POET/CRITIC SCENE 1 POET: Again like a rebellious nation my heart Stands and cries: forward, to the battle! To the battle? Now? What's a battle to an old man Like me. O barricades of washed-up words, Stanzas filling books with my heart's murmurs, My love is lined with lies and sweetened With the sweetest white sugar. My thoughts are rusty, My feelings but smoky furniture And scraps of youthful rage gone by. All this, piled on the barricades. But whither my flag, my withering flag? Spring is in my heart again and winter in my eyes, Fall in my arms and frost in my toes. O desire, O vain rebellion, What more . . . [The voice fades into the background.] JOE:   This is the end. This is the end. [We hear knocks at the door.] This is the end. This is the end. [RACHEL enters as JOE continues grumbling.] RACHEL: Joe, Joe, what's with you? JOE:   This is the end. [We hear him furiously tearing newspaper.] The end! The end! The end! The end! RACHEL: [Anxiously.] What's wrong with you? The end of what? What happened? Good God. I have never . . . JOE: [Apathetically.] This is the end. Read the newspaper. RACHEL: Which newspaper? Where? JOE: There, that ball, that ball of paper. [RACHEL opens it.] Well read it! RACHEL: One moment. You've torn and crumpled it . . . hold on . . . this is a   serious act of archaeological reconstruction. JOE: Come on, read it out loud! RACHEL: . . . and frost in my toes. O desire, O vain rebellion, What more do I ask? O dark desperation In a tenebrous valley like a ship of ghosts. But behold! What is that light on the horizon, Yonder as if from a distant cave? My legs fail me, yet my heart Soaks up hope like a big sponge in the bathtub. [She laughs.] A big sponge in the bathtub! JOE: Go on. Go on. RACHEL: [A little hurt.] Fine, fine, stop rushing me . . . one moment, one moment . . . it's hard to make out . . . OK: Three maidens sit in that cave weaving my fate. Spin-spin on the spindle, no not on the spindle, no. They crouch over books by lamplight. The students. How studious! Till dawn breaks they study and maybe read my poems of yore. JOE: Go on! RACHEL: Slowly I'll sneak through the rustling summer grass And watch, struck with awe. There is a window Ancient, arched, and there she sits with her hand stroking The hair of her . . . head. O, my studious one, I begged to see you, only to see, not to touch, Not to sit in your room, only to know your name, To call your name, O your name, your name and your name and your name. I'll peep stealthily . . . Enough, I can't read anymore. JOE: Do you know what this means? RACHEL: I know. JOE:   The end of my glorious dissertation. The end of the literature department's rising star. I'll remain a teaching assistant forever. I might as well go back to the army. RACHEL: I won't let you, I love you. JOE:   So what? I'll sit and start writing on a new subject. Come to me in four years when I'm done . . . RACHEL: You're out of your mind. JOE:   . . . only to discover, like Sisyphus, that it was all for naught. [Despairingly.] What an idiot! And just yesterday I wrote the final chapter! [Sarcastically.] Here, look, the dissertation that will revolutionize the appreciation of D.G. Castleman's poetry. RACHEL: [Sweetly.] And I drew the letters on the cover: "D.G. Castleman's Poetry and its Interpretation." JOE:   The long silence of D.G. Castleman . . . [Slight pause, then with anger.

We forget where we came from. Our Jewish names from the Exile give us away, bring back the memory of flower and fruit, medieval cities, metals, knights who turned to stone, roses, spices whose scent drifted away, precious stones, lots of red, handicrafts long gone from the world (the hands are gone too). Circumcision does it to us, as in the Bible story of Shechem and the sons of Jacob, so that we go on hurting all our lives. What are we doing, coming back here with this pain? Our longings were drained together with the swamps, the desert blooms for us, and our children are beautiful. Even the wrecks of ships that sank on the way reached this shore, even winds did. Not all the sails. What are we doing in this dark land with its yellow shadows that pierce the eyes? (Every now and then someone says, even after forty or fifty years: "The sun is killing me.") What are we doing with these souls of mist, with these names, with our eyes of forests, with our beautiful children, with our quick blood? Spilled blood is not the roots of trees but it's the closest thing to roots we have.

It's been a while since they asked, Who lives in between these houses, And who was he, the last of the last to speak, And who forgot his coat between these houses, And who was the one who stayed. Why didn't he flee? Among the blossomers, a dead tree stands, dead tree. A long-standing error, a misunderstanding of yore, The edge of the Land, where an era begins to be For somebody else. A bit of stillness there. And the current events of body and of hell, The reeds of the end, their spells of sway and sough. The wind passed on its way through that locale And a serious dog saw the humans laugh.