The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai Read Online Free Page A

leaves, secure the tree,
    tell the dead to report home immediately.”
    The white lamb leaned over, said to the wolf:
    “Humans are bleating and my heart aches with grief.
    I’m afraid they’ll get to gunpoint, to bayonets in the dust.
    At our next meeting this matter will be discussed.”
    All the nations (united) will flow to Jerusalem
    to see if the Torah has gone out. And then,
    inasmuch as it’s spring, they’ll come down
    and pick flowers from all around.
    And they’ll beat swords into plowshares and plowshares into swords,
    and so on and so on, and back and forth.
    Perhaps from being beaten thinner and thinner,
    the iron of hatred will vanish, forever.

    And That Is Your Glory
    (Phrase from the liturgy of the Days of Awe)
    I’ve yoked together my large silence and my small outcry
    like an ox and an ass. I’ve been through low and through high.
    I’ve been in Jerusalem, in Rome. And perhaps in Mecca anon.
    But now God is hiding, and man cries Where have you gone.
    And that is your glory.
    Underneath the world, God lies stretched on his back,
    always repairing, always things get out of whack.
    I wanted to see him all, but I see no more
    than the soles of his shoes and I’m sadder than I was before.
    And that is his glory.
    Even the trees went out once to choose a king.
    A thousand times I’ve given my life one more fling.
    At the end of the street somebody stands and picks:
    this one and this one and this one and this one and this.
    And that is your glory.
    Perhaps like an ancient statue that has no arms
    our life, without deeds and heroes, has greater charms.
    Ungird my T-shirt, love; this was my final bout.
    I fought all the knights, until the electricity gave out.
    And that is my glory.
    Rest your mind, it ran with me all the way,
    it’s exhausted now and needs to knock off for the day.
    I see you standing by the wide-open fridge door, revealed
    from head to toe in a light from another world.
    And that is my glory
    and that is his glory
    and that is your glory.

    Of Three or Four in a Room
    Of three or four in a room
    there is always one who stands beside the window.
    He must see the evil among thorns
    and the fires on the hill.
    And how people who went out of their houses whole
    are given back in the evening like small change.
    Of three or four in a room
    there is always one who stands beside the window,
    his dark hair above his thoughts.
    Behind him, words.
    And in front of him, voices wandering without a knapsack,
    hearts without provisions, prophecies without water,
    large stones that have been returned
    and stay sealed, like letters that have no
    address and no one to receive them.

    Not Like a Cypress
    Not like a cypress,
    not all at once, not all of me,
    but like the grass, in thousands of cautious green exits,
    to be hiding like many children
    while one of them seeks.
    And not like the single man,
    like Saul, whom the multitude found
    and made king.
    But like the rain in many places
    from many clouds, to be absorbed, to be drunk
    by many mouths, to be breathed in
    like the air all year long
    and scattered like blossoming in springtime.
    Not the sharp ring that wakes up
    the doctor on call,
    but with tapping, on many small windows
    at side entrances, with many heartbeats.
    And afterward the quiet exit, like smoke
    without shofar-blasts, a statesman resigning,
    children tired from play,
    a stone as it almost stops rolling
    down the steep hill, in the place
    where the plain of great renunciation begins,
    from which, like prayers that are answered,
    dust rises in many myriads of grains.

    Through Two Points Only One Straight Line Can Pass
    (Theorem in geometry)
    A planet once got married to a star,
    and inside, voices talked of future war.
    I only know what I was told in class:
    through two points only one straight line can pass.
    A stray dog chased us down an empty street.
    I threw a stone; the dog would not retreat.
    The king of Babel stooped to eating grass.
    Through two points only one straight line