Yehuda Amichai: “Tourists”

TOURISTS
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel’s Tomb and Herzl’s Tomb
And on the top of Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust over our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David’s Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. “You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there’s an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head.” “But he’s moving, he’s moving!” I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, “You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family.”
–Yehuda Amichai

Translated by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt

Yehuda Amichai: “The True Hero of the Aqedah”

THE TRUE HERO OF THE AQEDAH

The true hero of the aqedah was the ram
who did not know of the conniving of the others.
It is as if he volunteered to die in Isaac’s place.
I want to sing a tribute to his memory,
to his curly wool and his human eyes,
to the horns that were so quiet on his lovely head
and after the slaughter were made into trumpets
to sound for their wars
or for the blasts of their vulgar joy.

I want to remember the last picture
like a nice photograph in an elegant fashion magazine:
the spoilt tanned lad in his dandified clothes
and beside him the angel dressed in a log silk gown
for a festive reception,
both with empty eyes
staring at the empty places.

Behind them, as a colorful background, the ram
caught in the thicket before the slaughter.
And the thicket is his last friend.

The angel went home.
Isaac went home.
Abraham and God left a long time ago.

But the true hero of the aqedah
is the ram.

–Yehuda Amichai

Translation by Tova Forti.

Photo: Floor mosaic at the Beit Alfa Synagogue by Garo Nalbandian.

Yehuda Amichai: “Open closed open”

Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is open
in the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closed
within us. And when we die, everything is open again.
Open closed open. That’s all we are.

Yehuda Amichai (1998)

Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

Photo credit: Red Autumn Rose by bratjerm

Yehuda Amichai: “A Man in his life”

A man in his life-
the first temple is destroyed and the second temple is destroyed,
but he must remain in his life.
That is not like what happened to a nation
that went into exile over there,
that is not like what happened to the Lord
who simply ascended to lofty locales.

A man in his life
revives the dead in a dream
and buries (them) in his second dream.

Yehuda Amichai

Translated by M. Salomon

Photo credit: Detail from Stones from temple wall by Goldberg