文章基本信息

标题：We Did What We Had To
作者：Amichai, Yehuda
期刊名称：The American Poetry Review
印刷版ISSN：0360-3709
出版年度：1996
卷号：Sep/Oct 1996
出版社：World Poetry, Inc.

We Did What We Had To

Amichai, Yehuda

We did what we had to. We went out with our children to gather mushrooms in the forest we planted ourselves when we were children. We learned the names of the wildflowers whose fragrance

was like blood spilled in vain. We loaded a great love onto little bodies. We stood enlarged and reduced by turns in the eyes of the mad god, Holder of the Binoculars, and in the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, we loved the good soothing dark and hated the painful light.

We did what we had to, we loved our childhood better than our homeland.

We've already dug all the wells into the ground, and now we're digging into the emptiness of the sky. Wells, wells, without end, to no end. We did what we had to.

We replaced "Remember, 0 God" with "Let us forget" the way they change the number on the front of the bus when the destination changes,

or the sign "Dew and Showers" on the synagogue wall to "He Who Brings Rain" when the seasons change. We did what we had to.

We arranged our lives into flowerbeds and shade and straight paths for pleasant strolling like the garden of a mental asylum. Our despair is domesticated and gives us peace. Only our hopes have remained wild, their cries shatter the night and tear apart the day. We did what we had to.

We were like people who enter a movie theater and pass by those who are leaving, flushed or pale, quietly crying or laughing aloud. Who enter without looking back or turning around, into the light and the darkness and the light. We did what we had to do.