Yehuda Amichai Quotes

And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.

And what will you do now? You'll collect loves Like stamps. You've got doubles and no one Will trade you and you have the damaged ones.

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.

Look, just as time isn't inside clocks love isn't inside bodies: bodies only tell the love.

People use each other as a healing for their pain. They put each other on their existential wound, on the eye, on the cunt, on mouth and open hand. They hold each other and won’t let go.

Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself without anyone noticing.

It was not an adventure; it was my life.

Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity.

In my life are many windows and many graves. Sometimes they exchange roles: then a window is closed forever, then by way of a gravestone I can see very far. (Hebrew-to-English translation by Rabbi Steven Sager)

A man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn't have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that. A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love. And to hate and forgive and remember and forget, to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do. A man doesn't have time. When he loses he seeks, when he finds he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget. And his soul is seasoned, his soul is very professional. Only his body remains forever an amateur. It tries and it misses, gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing, drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains. He will die as figs die in autumn, Shriveled and full of himself and sweet, the leaves growing dry on the ground, the bare branches pointing to the place where there's time for everything.

The memory of my father is wrapped up in white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day of work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits out of his hat, he drew love from his small body.

To live is to build a ship and a harbor at the same time. And to complete the harbor long after the ship was drowned.

Yes, all of this is sorrow. But leave a little love burning always like the small bulb in the room of a sleeping baby that gives him a bit of security and quiet love though he doesn’t know what the light is or where it comes from.

When you smile, serious ideas get exhausted. At night the mountains keep quiet beside you, in the morning the sand goes with you down to the beach. When you do nice things to me all the heavy industries shut down.

But peace returns to my heart. Not peace as it used to be before it left me years ago. It went away to school, matured as I did, and came back looking like me.

A flock of sheep near the airport or a high voltage generator beside the orchard: these combinations open up my life like a wound, but they also heal it. That's why my feelings always come in twos.

Like a butcher sharpening knife on knife I sharpen heart on heart inside me.

And as we stray further from love we multiply the words, words and sentences so long and orderly. Had we remained together we could have become a silence.

Try to remember some details. For the world is filled with people who were torn from their sleep with no one to mend the tear, and unlike wild beasts they live each in his lonely hiding place and they die together on battlefields and in hospitals. And the earth will swallow all of them, good and evil together, like the followers of Korah, all of them in their rebellion against death, their mouths open till the last moment, praising and cursing in a single howl. Try, try to remember some details.

The rain is speaking quietly, you can sleep now. Near my bed, the rustle of newspaper wings. There are no other angles. I’ll wake up early and bribe the coming day to be kind to us.

I’ve never been in those places where I’ve never been and never will be, I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years, but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time is my own.

The echo of a great love is like the echo of a huge dog’s barking in an empty Jerusalem house marked for demolition.

After you left me I had a bloodhound sniff at my chest and my belly. Let it fill its nostrils and set out to find you. I hope it will find you and rip your lover’s balls to shreds and bite off his cock— or at least bring me one of your stockings between its teeth.

Only my penis is still free and happy, no good for sword fights and no good for any work, or even for hanging things on, or for digging trenches. Praise be to God that it is so.

Now and then, I remember you in times Unbelievable. And in places not made for memory But for the transient, the passing that does not remain.

Spy (1973) Many years ago, I was sent to spy out the land beyond the age of thirty. And I stayed there and didn’t go back to my senders, so as not to be made to tell about this land and made to lie.

From the place where we are right Flowers will never grow In the spring. The place where we are right Is hard and trampled Like a yard. But doubts and loves Dig up the world Like a mole, a plow. And a whisper will be heard in the place Where the ruined House once stood.

My girlfriend forgot her love on the sidewalk like a bicycle. All night outside, in the dew.

My love turns me like a salt sea, it seems, Into sweet drops of autumn’s first rain. I’m brought to you slowly as I fall. Take me in. For us there’s no angel who will come to redeem. For we are together. Each of us alone.

Out of three or four in a room One is always standing at the window Hair dark above his thoughts Behind him the words And in front of him the words, wandering without luggage Hearts without provision, prophecies without water, And big stones put there And stayed, closed, like letters, With no adresses; and no one to receive them.

Last to dry was the hair. When we were already far from the sea, when words and salt, which had merged on us, separated from one another with a sigh, and your body no longer showed signs of a terrible ancientness. And in vain we had forgotten a few things on the beach, so that we would have an excuse to return. We didn’t return. And these days I remember the days that have your name on them, like a name on a ship, and how we saw through two open doors one man who was thinking, and how we looked at the clouds with the ancient gaze we inherited from our fathers, who waited for rain, and how at night, when the world cooled off, your body kept its warmth for a long time, like the sea

I stroked your hair in a direction opposite to your journey

Sometimes pus Sometimes a poem. Something always burst out. And always pain.

Sometimes I want to lie down on a park bench: that would change my status from Lost Inside to Lost Outside.

If only it were possible to grasp the moment when two people first become strangers to each other.

I don't drink wine; but everything the wine doesn't do to me is a black abyss without drunkenness, a dark empty vineyard where they tread and bruise the soles of their feet on the hard stone.

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.

A friend of mine tells a story about some Israeli students who were called up in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As soon as they were notified, they went back to their rooms at University, and each packed his gear, a rifle, and a book of Yehuda Amichai’s poems.

Il diametro della bomba era di trenta centimetri e il diametro del suo raggio d'azione era di circa sette metri, con quattro morti e undici feriti... E non parliamo nemmeno del pianto degli orfani che si leva fino al trono di Dio e ben oltre, creando un creando un cerchio senza fine e senza Dio.

Eyes sharp as can-openers pried open heavy secrets.

Children mark the eras of my life and the eras of Jerusalem with moon chalk on the street. God’s hand in the world.

I'm like a rifle that's a little out of date but very accurate: when I love, there's a strong recoil, back to childhood, and it hurts.

I tried to go out into my time and to know, but I couldn't get any farther than the body of the woman beside me.

Jerusalem, the only city in the world where the right to vote is granted even to the dead.

You got too tired of being an advertisement for our world, so that angels could see: yes it's pretty, earth.

And soon, in the coming nights, we will appear, like wandering actors, each in the other's dream and in the dreams of strangers whom we didn't know together.

Every intelligent person, whether he's an artist or not - a mathematician, a doctor, a scientist - possesses a poetic way of seeing and describing the world.

I'm made from remnants of flesh and blood And leftovers of philosophies.

The sun thought that Jerusalem was a sea and set in her: a terrible mistake.

already she drew in the sand with her big toe: King Solomon, as though he were a rubber ball, an apocalyptic, bearded herring, an imperial walking-stick, an amalgam, half chicken and half Solomon.

Where do you feel your soul inside you?" Stretched between my mouth-hole and my asshole, a white thread, not transparent mist, cramped in some corner between two bones, in pain. When it is full it disappears, like a cat.

I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment millions of human beings are standing at crossroads and intersections, in jungles and deserts, showing each other where to turn, what the right way is, which direction. They explain exactly where to go, what is the quickest way to get there, when to stop and ask again. There, over there. The second turnoff, not the first, and from there left or right, near the white house, by the oak tree. They explain with excited voices, with a wave of the hand and a nod of the head: There, over there, not that there, the other there, as in some ancient rite. This too is a new religion. I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment.

In the Middle of This Century” In the middle of this century we turned to each other With half faces and full eyes like an ancient Egyptian picture And for a short while. I stroked your hair In the opposite direction to your journey, We called to each other, Like calling out the names of towns Where nobody stops Along the route. Lovely is the world rising early to evil, Lovely is the world falling asleep to sin and pity, In the mingling of ourselves, you and I, Lovely is the world. The earth drinks men and their loves Like wine, To forget. It can’t. And like the contours of the Judean hills, We shall never find peace. In the middle of this century we turned to each other, I saw your body, throwing shade, waiting for me, The leather straps for a long journey Already tightening across my chest. I spoke in praise of your mortal hips, You spoke in praise of my passing face, I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey, I touched your flesh, prophet of your end, I touched your hand which has never slept, I touched your mouth which may yet sing. Dust from the desert covered the table At which we did not eat But with my finger I wrote on it The letters of your name.

We begged you, Lord, to divide right from wrong and instead you divided the waters above the firmament from those beneath it. We begged for the knowledge of good and evil, and you gave us all kinds of rules and regulations like the rules of soccer

As the years go by, my life keeps filling up with names like abandoned cemeteries or like an empty history class or a telephone book in a foreign city. And death is when someone behind you keeps calling and calling and you no longer turn around to see who.

Now all I know how to do is to grow dark in the evening. I'm happy with what I've got. And all I wish to say is my name and address, and perhaps my father's name, like a prisoner of war who, according to the Geneva Convention, is not required to say a single word more.

My son, again you worry me. From time to time you worry me, so regularly it should calm me. I remember once, when you were little, we saw a fire together in a big hotel. The flames and the water and the smoke, the wailing and the shouting and the madly flashing lights, all these saved me from lots of talk on what life is. And we stood in silence. I ask myself where my father hid his fear, perhaps in a closed closet or some other place beyond the reach of children, perhaps deep in his heart. But now again you worry me. I’m always looking for you, this time among the mists of the Upper Galilee. I am a mist father. And the child is no more, for he is already grown.

Even my loves are measured by wars. I say, "That happened after the Second World War." "We met a day before the Six Day War." I would never say "before the peace of '45-'48" or "in the middle of the peace of '56-'67." Yet the knowledge of peace makes its way from one place to another like children's games, which are so much alike everywhere you go.

A Tourist On a great rock by the Jaffa Gate sat a golden girl from Scandinavia and oiled herself with suntan oil as if on the beach. I told her, don’t go into these alleys, a net of bachelors in heat is spread there, a snare of lechers. And further inside, in half-darkness, the groaning trousers of old men, and unholy lust in the guise of prayer and grief and seductive chatter in many languages. Once Hebrew was God’s slang in these streets, now I use it for holy desire.

Like high mountain climbers who set up a base in the valley at the foot of the mountains and another camp and camp number two and camp number three at various heights on the road to the peak, and in every camp they leave food and provisions and equipment to make their last climb easier and to collect on their way back everything that might help them as they descend, so I leave my childhood and my youth and my adult years in various camps with a flag on every camp. I know I shall never return, but to get to the peak with no weight, light, light!

In the Middle of This Century" In the middle of this century we turned to each other With half faces and full eyes like an ancient Egyptian picture And for a short while. I stroked your hair In the opposite direction to your journey, We called to each other, Like calling out the names of towns Where nobody stops Along the route. Lovely is the world rising early to evil, Lovely is the world falling asleep to sin and pity, In the mingling of ourselves, you and I, Lovely is the world. The earth drinks men and their loves Like wine, To forget. It can't. And like the contours of the Judean hills, We shall never find peace. In the middle of this century we turned to each other, I saw your body, throwing shade, waiting for me, The leather straps for a long journey Already tightening across my chest. I spoke in praise of your mortal hips, You spoke in praise of my passing face, I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey, I touched your flesh, prophet of your end, I touched your hand which has never slept, I touched your mouth which may yet sing. Dust from the desert covered the table At which we did not eat But with my finger I wrote on it The letters of your name.

I remembered the poem “Tourists” by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai; Amichai describes sitting with two baskets under a Roman arch in Jerusalem. A tour guide points out the arch to his group by noting it is just above the head of the man with shopping baskets. And the poet thinks that redemption would arrive if only the tour guide would say, “You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family.

Yehuda Amichai’s lines: hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.

My father built over me a worry big as a shipyard and I left it once, before I was finished, and he remained there with his big, empty worry.

The enormous snow was set down far away. Sometimes I must use my love as the only way to describe it, and must hire the wind to demonstrate the wailing of women. It's hard for stones that roll from season to season to remember the dreamers and the whisperers in the grass, who fell in their love. And like a man who keeps shaking his wrist when his watch stops: Who is shaking us? Who?

Our life of joy turns to a life of tears, our life eternal to a life of years. Our life of gold became a life of brass. Through two points only one straight line can pass.

From the place where we are right Flowers will never grow in spring. The place where we are right Is hard and trampled Like a yard. But doubts and loves Dig up the world Like a mole, a plough. And a whisper will be heard in the place Where the ruined House once stood.

Sono il profeta di ciò che è stato, io leggo il passato nel palmo della mano della donna che amo, prevedo le piogge invernali già cadute, sono un esperto della neve dell'anno scorso, richiamo dagli inferi le cose che sono state, vaticino ieri e ier l'altro. Sono il profeta di ciò che è stato

las memorias de lo que no fuimos y lo que no hicimos no tienen menos valor que lo poco que en la realidad (¿y al fin de cuenta qué será eso de realidad?)

Once I was sitting on the steps near the gate at David's Citadel and I put down my two heavy baskets beside me. A group of tourists stood there around their guide, and I became their point of reference. "You see that man over there with the baskets? A little to the right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. A little to the right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: Redemption will come only when they are told, "Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period? It doesn't matter, but near it, a little to the left and then down a bit, there's a man who has just bought fruit and vegetables for his family.

My personal history has coincided with a larger history. For me it's always been one and the same.

To live is to build a ship and a harbor at the same time. And to complete the harbor long after the ship was drowned.

To yell "Mama," when she cannot hear, and to yell "God," when I don't believe in Him. And even if I did believe in Him, I wouldn't have told Him about the war as you don't tell a child about grown-up horrors.

Let them think I am a bush or a lamb. A tree, a shadow of a tree, A doubt, a shadow of a doubt, A living hedge, a dead stone, A house, a corner of a house.

And when my times comes, I shall don the camouflage garb of my end; The white of clouds and a lot of sky blue and stars that have no end.

A man has to hate and love all at once, with the same eyes to cry and to laugh, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, make love in war and war in love.

And hate and forgive and remember and forget and order and confuse and eat and digest what long history does in so many years.