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Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
Edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell
Published 1986 by Harper & Row
To read Yehuda Amichai in English is to sojourn, yes, in Jerusalem, more, in Amichai's denuded heart—
but to see it all with a crick in my neck, able only to look out the left-hand side of the bus. In this
translation of his Selected Poetry, the scenes pass: stone and sand architecture; crowds of workers,
soldiers, family members; heaped goods and quiet meals; long loves and fleeting notice. Reading
these poems is to sustain explosions of new sense memories, to be consumed with fresh details—
reading the poems in English is to know they harbor still more beauty. Not knowing Hebrew, I can't
turn my head to see what incomparable, heartbreaking balance of truth and wish lies out that
window.
Amichai's voice is calm, colloquial, casual. The way one might say, "Pardon me, you've dropped your
pen," Amichai will say, "And in the big cities, protestors blocked the roads like / a blocked heart,
whose master will die..."
So I wonder what I'm not hearing. How must one who makes easy fantastical connections, who sets
single nouns and entire memory constructs equal, also play with homonym, rhythm, internal rhyme,
with invented words, cousins of ancient words? This is, after all, Amichai—a poet credited with
revivification, with re-knitting the bones of Hebrew vernacular. His poetry gave a country a new map
into its old language.
Here's Amichai: "At the end of summer I breathe this air / that is burnt and pained. My thoughts have
/ the stillness of many closed books: / many crowded books, with most of their pages / stuck
together like eyelids in the morning."
And Amichai, to a woman: "You had a laughter of grapes: / many round green laughs. / Your body is
full of lizards. / All of them love the sun."
In these poems, the acts of watching and describing become one intention, one result. Amichai
systematizes little, responds much; sees, and does not sneer; judges, not to dispose but to know.
His poems are not slices of life, but core samples.
If you want to learn something about how to love a city and yet not pretend its horrors do not exist,
how to cherish a person, yet not omit flawed relationship, read Yehuda Amichai. If you want to read
not a declaration of love, but a proof of love, read Amichai. For to observe without flinching, whatever
terrors of truth or beauty may appear, and remain steadfast, observing, is a proof of love. "I see
everything about you," Amichai says to the city, the seasons, the soldiers, his woman, his father, his
God, "and here I am still."
Amichai is not frightened away. He thereby makes it safe for us to look on a terrible world complete.
I suspect that in Hebrew, the one difficulty of these poems would dissipate. In weight, in flavor, the
poems are like a rare, nutritive honey—not a condiment but a dietary staple, heavy, dependable. I
suspect that in Hebrew the tone dances, that the phrases don't share a single, though delicious,
viscosity, as in English. But who am I to complain of manna?
What survives translation is not the full tour, not a map to Hebrew vernacular. What survives is a
map through Amichai. We can navigate by these lines and points, read the poems like the knots of a
safety rope—here—we descend into the technical truths of war, of loss, and of heretofore
unimaginable love.
Published 1986 by Harper & Row
To read Yehuda Amichai in English is to sojourn, yes, in Jerusalem, more, in Amichai's denuded heart—
but to see it all with a crick in my neck, able only to look out the left-hand side of the bus. In this
translation of his Selected Poetry, the scenes pass: stone and sand architecture; crowds of workers,
soldiers, family members; heaped goods and quiet meals; long loves and fleeting notice. Reading
these poems is to sustain explosions of new sense memories, to be consumed with fresh details—
reading the poems in English is to know they harbor still more beauty. Not knowing Hebrew, I can't
turn my head to see what incomparable, heartbreaking balance of truth and wish lies out that
window.
Amichai's voice is calm, colloquial, casual. The way one might say, "Pardon me, you've dropped your
pen," Amichai will say, "And in the big cities, protestors blocked the roads like / a blocked heart,
whose master will die..."
So I wonder what I'm not hearing. How must one who makes easy fantastical connections, who sets
single nouns and entire memory constructs equal, also play with homonym, rhythm, internal rhyme,
with invented words, cousins of ancient words? This is, after all, Amichai—a poet credited with
revivification, with re-knitting the bones of Hebrew vernacular. His poetry gave a country a new map
into its old language.
Here's Amichai: "At the end of summer I breathe this air / that is burnt and pained. My thoughts have
/ the stillness of many closed books: / many crowded books, with most of their pages / stuck
together like eyelids in the morning."
And Amichai, to a woman: "You had a laughter of grapes: / many round green laughs. / Your body is
full of lizards. / All of them love the sun."
In these poems, the acts of watching and describing become one intention, one result. Amichai
systematizes little, responds much; sees, and does not sneer; judges, not to dispose but to know.
His poems are not slices of life, but core samples.
If you want to learn something about how to love a city and yet not pretend its horrors do not exist,
how to cherish a person, yet not omit flawed relationship, read Yehuda Amichai. If you want to read
not a declaration of love, but a proof of love, read Amichai. For to observe without flinching, whatever
terrors of truth or beauty may appear, and remain steadfast, observing, is a proof of love. "I see
everything about you," Amichai says to the city, the seasons, the soldiers, his woman, his father, his
God, "and here I am still."
Amichai is not frightened away. He thereby makes it safe for us to look on a terrible world complete.
I suspect that in Hebrew, the one difficulty of these poems would dissipate. In weight, in flavor, the
poems are like a rare, nutritive honey—not a condiment but a dietary staple, heavy, dependable. I
suspect that in Hebrew the tone dances, that the phrases don't share a single, though delicious,
viscosity, as in English. But who am I to complain of manna?
What survives translation is not the full tour, not a map to Hebrew vernacular. What survives is a
map through Amichai. We can navigate by these lines and points, read the poems like the knots of a
safety rope—here—we descend into the technical truths of war, of loss, and of heretofore
unimaginable love.
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