Lying in Wait for Happiness by Yehuda Amichai
Here’s another one from my poetry buddy, who seems to be the only reason the PotD has been afloat this past week. I’ve been spending my time with my family instead of pumping up my poetry file. I did get some awesome poetry books for Christmas, though…
Lying in Wait for Happiness
By Yehuda Amichai
On the broad steps leading down to the Western Wall
A beautiful woman came up to me: You don’t remember me,
I’m Shoshana in Hebrew. Something else in other languages.
All is vanity.
Thus she spoke at twilight standing between the destroyed
and the built, between the light and the dark.
Black birds and white birds changed places
With the great rhythm of breathing.
The flash of a tourist’s camera lit my memory too:
What are you doing here between the promised and the forgotten,
between the hoped for and the imagined
With your lovely face like an advertisement for God
And your soul rent and torn like mine?
She answered me: My soul is rent and torn like yours
But it is beautiful because of that
Like fine lace.
I have heard only one other poem by Amichai, but it stopped my heart. Entitled ‘The Diameter of the Bomb,” it describes the effect of a terrorist bomb in few simple distance metrics. Szymborska’s “The Terrorist, he watches” is a similar equally vivid poem. I found both of them too real and easy to understand and imagine. Both made me quickly close the book, as though my hands were about to ignite, and just walk away speachless in shock.