Another great day in April, and the poetry is flowing. Today we have a pick from our very own Joe, IM extraordinaire.
“Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) is considered Israel’s greatest modern poet. Before the 19th century, Hebrew was almost exclusively used for religious purposes and so ceased to exist in a modern sense. With the rise of Zionism, Hebrew was pulled out of its sacred box, dusted off, and entirely new words had to be fashioned from the whole cloth of archaic sources so that one could express the modernity of the last two thousand or more years. Hebrew is now enshrined as the national language of Israel and Yehuda Amichai was the first to compose poetry in this language hastily stitched together from the past and the present. He is my favorite contemporary poet.”
National Thoughts by Yehuda Amichai
A woman, caught in a homeland-trap of the Chosen People: you.
Cossack’s fur hat on your head: you the
off spring of their pogroms. “After these things had come to pass,”
always.
Or, for example, your face: slanting eyes,
eyes descended from massacre. High cheekbones
of a hetman, head of murderers.
But a mitzvah dance of Hasidim,
naked on a rock at twilight,
beside the water canopies of Ein Gedi,
with eyes closed and body open like hair. After
these things had come to pass. “Always.”
People caught in a homeland-trap:
to speak now in this weary language.
a language that was torn from its sleep in the Bible: dazzled,
it wobbles from mouth to mouth. In a language that once described
miracles and God, to say car, bomb, God.
Square letters want to stay
closed; each letter a closed house,
to stay and to close yourself in
and to sleep inside it, forever.
For more poetry by Yehuda Amichai check out The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Newly Revised and Expanded Edition.
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