Author: Yehuda Amichai

All night the army came up from Gilgal To get to the killing field, and that’s all. In the ground, […]

God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead. If God was not full of mercy, Mercy would have been in the world, […]

You mustn’t show weakness And you’ve got to have a tan. But sometimes I feel like the thin veils Of […]

Once a great love cut my life in two. The first part goes on twisting At some other place like […]

Before the gate has been closed, Before the last quetion is posed, Before I am transposed. Before the weeds fill […]

Out of three or four in the room One is always standing at the window. Forced to see the injustice […]

Half the people in the world love the other half, half the people hate the other half. Must I because […]

A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert, A drive in the rain. Yes, in the rain. There […]

Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west, Latin writing, from west to east. Languages are like cats: […]

On a roof in the Old City Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight: The white sheet of a woman […]

A man doesn’t have time in his life To have time for everything. He doesn’t have seasons enough to have […]

There is a street where they sell only red meat And there is a street where they sell only clothes […]

And we shall not get excited. Because a translator May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on Words from […]

On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery, A Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by […]

A precise woman with a short haircut brings order To my thoughts and my dresser drawers, Moves feelings around like […]

The first rain reminds me Of the rising summer dust. The rain doesn’t remember the rain of yesteryear. A year […]

Memorial day for the war dead. Add now The grief of all your losses to their grief, Even of a […]

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, Then let my right be forgotten. Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember. […]

They amputated Your thighs off my hips. As far as I’m concerned They are all surgeons. All of them. They […]

“What kind of a person are you,” I heard them say to me. I’m a person with a complex plumbing […]