Yehuda Amichai Poems

God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead.
If God was not full of mercy,
Mercy would have been in the world,
Not just in Him.
...

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
Both in their temporary failure.
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They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.
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God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children -- less.
But adults he pities not at all.
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If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Then let my right be forgotten.
Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember.
Let my left remember, and your right close
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The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
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In a modern museum
In an old synagogue
In the synagogue
I
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All night the army came up from Gilgal
To get to the killing field, and that's all.
In the ground, warf and woof, lay the dead.
I want to die in My own bed.
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On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,
abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer
nor the voice of lamentation is heard there
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I know a man
who photographed the view he saw
from the window of the room where he made love
and not the face of the woman he loved there.
...