Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

To Speak About Changes Was to Speak Love

It's a long time since I have heard from you.
I have not received even a little piece of paper,
even like an official one from offices,
which have forgotten my name and my existence.

The generation machine is still sweet
between my thighs, but for a long time
I haven't felt the sweetness of a letter between my
eyes.

We did not stay long enough together
to put us up as a lovers' monument.

Now time comes in place of time.
Sadness is changing its people like clothes
and your serious face is slicing your life:
each slice with another man on it.

Once we were talking about changes.
To speak about changes was to speak love.



Letter

To sit on the veranda of a hotel in Jerusalem
and to write: sweetly pass the days
from desert to sea.
Time passes-like somebody who, on a telephone,
is laughing or weeping far away from me:
whatever I'm hearing I can't see.
And whatever I see I don't hear.

We were careful when we said "next year"
or "a month ago". These words are like
glass splinters, which you can hurt yourself with,
or cut veins. Those who do things like that.

But you were beautiful, like the interpretation
of ancient books.
Surplus of women in your far country
brought you to me, but
other statistics have taken you
away from me.

To live is to build a ship and a harbor
at the same time. And to complete the harbor
long after the ship was drowned.

And to finish: I remember only
that there was mist. And whoever
remembers only mist-
what does he remember?



Bird

There is a bird in the sky
which, perhaps, is singing now
a sweet song:

If only I were a human being,
a man with feet
on this great and heavy earth,
I would stand and stand and stand
and never move from there.


translated from the Hebrew by the author and Ted Hughes