Author: Yehuda Amichai

On Rabbi Kook’s Street I walk without this good man A streiml he wore for prayer A silk top hat […]

I have become very hairy all over my body. I’m afraid they’ll start hunting me because of my fur. My […]

Not the peace of a cease-fire Not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, But rather As in […]

The end was quick and bitter. Slow and sweet was the time between us, Slow and sweet were the nights […]

Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing Of the one you love So that on the day of loss […]

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 […]

Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light in the backyard so it stays lit all the next […]

Near the wall of a house painted To look like stone, I saw visions of God. A sleepless night that […]

Do not accept these rains that come too late. Better to linger. Make your pain An image of the desert. […]

The little park planted in memory of a boy Who fell in the war begins To resemble him As he […]

After you left me I let a dog smell at My chest and my belly. It will fill its nose […]