A Flock of Sheep Near the Airport

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. That's why I'm like a man who tears up a letter and then has second thoughts, picking up the pieces and pasting them together again with great pains, sometimes for the rest of his life.

But once I went looking for my son at night and found him in an empty basketball court lit by a powerful floodlight. He was playing all alone. And the sound of the ball bouncing was the only sound in the world.

Yehuda Amichai is one of the leading literary figures In Israel and a poet of international reputation. Since 1955 he has published eleven volumes of poetry in Hebrew, two novels, and a book of short stories. His work has been translated into thirty-three languages. He lives In Jerusalem.

Chana Bloch's books include twocollections of poetry, The Secrets of the Tribe and The Past Keeps Changing; translations of Dahlia Ravikovitch, Yehuda Amichai, and the Song of Songs; and a critical study, Spelling the Word George Herbert and the Bible. She is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Excerpted from The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Newly Revised and Expanded Edition, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell, published this September by the University of California Press.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 1996
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