War, violence, identity, Mahmoud Darwish, Yehuda Amichai (MEAS 330)

A Jewish Cemetery In Germany

On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery, a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs, abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer nor the voice of lamentation is heard there for the dead praise not the Lord. Only the voices of our children ring out, seeking graves and cheering each time they find one--like mushrooms in the forest, like wild strawberries. Here's another grave! There's the name of my mother's mothers, and a name from the last century. And here's a name, and there! And as I was about to brush the moss from the name-- Look! an open hand engraved on the tombstone, the grave of a kohen, his fingers splayed in a spasm of holiness and blessing, and here's a grave concealed by a thicket of berries that has to be brushed aside like a shock of hair from the face of a beautiful beloved woman.

Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy. An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father Both in their temporary failure. Our two voices met above The Sultan's Pool in the valley between us. Neither of us wants the boy or the goat To get caught in the wheels Of the "Had Gadya" machine.

Afterward we found them among the bushes, And our voices came back inside us Laughing and crying.

Searching for a goat or for a child has always been The beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

Yehuda Amichai

God Has Pity On Kindergarten Children

God has pity on kindergarten children, He pities school children -- less. But adults he pities not at all.

He abandons them, And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours In the scorching sand To reach the dressing station, Streaming with blood.

But perhaps He will have pity on those who love truly And take care of them And shade them Like a tree over the sleeper on the public bench.

Perhaps even we will spend on them Our last pennies of kindness Inherited from mother,

So that their own happiness will protect us Now and on other days.

Yehuda Amichai

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 raids 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 bare foot runners on the sands or, at least, the waving of a girl's kerchief, beside the mound?

Translated by Chana Bloch And Stephen Mitchell

Yehuda Amichai

I Want To Die In My Own Bed

All night the army came up from Gilgal To get to the killing field, and that's all. In the ground, warf and woof, lay the dead. I want to die in My own bed. Like slits in a tank, their eyes were uncanny, I'm always the few and they are the many. I must answer. They can interrogate My head. But I want to die in My own bed.

The sun stood still in Gibeon. Forever so, it's willing to illuminate those waging battle and killing. I may not see My wife when her blood is shed, But I want to die in My own bed.

Samson, his strength in his long black hair, My hair they sheared when they made me a hero Perforce, and taught me to charge ahead. I want to die in My own bed.

I saw you could live and furnish with grace Even a lion's den, if you've no other place. I don't even mind to die alone, to be dead, But I want to die in My own bed.

Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav

Yehuda Amichai

If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, Then let my right be forgotten. Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember. Let my left remember, and your right close And your mouth open near the gate.

I shall remember Jerusalem And forget the forest -- my love will remember, Will open her hair, will close my window, will forget my right, Will forget my left.

If the west wind does not come I'll never forgive the walls, Or the sea, or myself. Should my right forget My left shall forgive, I shall forget all water, I shall forget my mother.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, Let my blood be forgotten. I shall touch your forehead, Forget my own, My voice change For the second and last time To the most terrible of voices -- Or silence.

Yehuda Amichai

Memorial Day For The War Dead

Memorial day for the war dead. Add now the grief of all your losses to their grief, even of a woman that has left you. Mix sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history, which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread, in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God. "Behind all this some great happiness is hiding." No use to weep inside and to scream outside. Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up as a little girl with flowers. The streets are cordoned off with ropes, for the marching together of the living and the dead. Children with a grief not their own march slowly, like stepping over broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days. A dead soldier swims above little heads with the swimming movements of the dead, with the ancient error the dead have about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies off. A shopwindow is decorated with dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white. And everything in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

A great and royal animal is dying all through the night under the jasmine tree with a constant stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb. "Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."

Yehuda Amichai

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

Yehuda Amichai