The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai Read Online Free Page B

can pass.
    Your small sob is enough for many pains,
    as locomotive-power can pull long trains.
    When will we step inside the looking-glass?
    Through two points only one straight line can pass.
    At times I stands apart, at times it rhymes
    with you, at times we ’s singular, at times
    plural, at times I don’t know what. Alas,
    through two points only one straight line can pass.
    Our life of joy turns to a life of tears,
    our life eternal to a life of years.
    Our life of gold became a life of brass.
    Through two points only one straight line can pass.

    Half the People in the World
    Half the people in the world
    love the other half,
    half the people
    hate the other half.
    Must I because of this half and that half
    go wandering and changing ceaselessly
    like rain in its cycle,
    must I sleep among rocks,
    and grow rugged like the trunks of olive trees,
    and hear the moon barking at me,
    and camouflage my love with worries,
    and sprout like frightened grass between the railroad tracks,
    and live underground like a mole,
    and remain with roots and not with branches,
    and not feel my cheek against the cheek of angels,
    and love in the first cave,
    and marry my wife beneath a canopy
    of beams that support the earth,
    and act out my death, always
    till the last breath and the last
    words and without ever understanding,
    and put flagpoles on top of my house
    and a bomb shelter underneath. And go out on roads
    made only for returning and go through
    all the appalling stations—
    cat, stick, fire, water, butcher,
    between the kid and the angel of death?
    Half the people love,
    half the people hate.
    And where is my place between such well-matched halves,
    and through what crack will I see
    the white housing projects of my dreams
    and the barefoot runners on the sands
    or, at least, the waving
    of a girl’s kerchief, beside the mound?

    For My Birthday
    Thirty-two times I went out into my life,
    each time causing less pain to my mother,
    less to other people,
    more to myself.
    Thirty-two times I have put on the world
    and still it doesn’t fit me.
    It weighs me down,
    unlike the coat that now takes the shape of my body
    and is comfortable
    and will gradually wear out.
    Thirty-two times I went over the account
    without finding the mistake,
    began the story
    but wasn’t allowed to finish it.
    Thirty-two years I’ve been carrying along with me
    my father’s traits
    and most of them I’ve dropped along the way,
    so I could ease the burden.
    And weeds grow in my mouth. And I wonder,
    and the beam in my eyes, which I won’t be able to remove,
    has started to blossom with the trees in springtime.
    And my good deeds grow smaller
    and smaller. But
    the interpretations around them have grown huge, as in
    an obscure passage of the Talmud
    where the text takes up less and less of the page
    and Rashi and the other commentators
    close in on it from every side.
    And now, after thirty-two times,
    I am still a parable
    with no chance to become its meaning.
    And I stand without camouflage before the enemy’s eyes,
    with outdated maps in my hand,
    in the resistance that is gathering strength and between towers,
    and alone, without recommendations
    in the vast desert.

    Two Photographs
    1. Uncle David
    When Uncle David fell in the First World War,
    the high Carpathians buried him in snow.
    And just as buried: his hard questions. So
    I never found out what the answers were.
    But somehow the brass buttons on his coat
    opened for me. My life began far from
    the pure white of his death, and like a gate
    his face swung open, and because of him
    I live my answer, as a part of all
    that did survive, after the deep snow fell.
    And he, still posing sadly as before,
    dressed in the antique uniform and the
    sharp helmet, seems like an ambassador
    from some strange land a hundred years away.
    2. Passport Photograph of a Young Woman
    Pinned to the paper like a butterfly.
    How is it your identity’s still breathing
    between the pages? Your mouth was set to