What Kind of Man

"What kind of man are you?" people ask me. I am a man with a complex network of pipes in my soul, sophisticated machineries of emotion and a precisely-monitored memory system of the late twentieth century, but with an old body from ancient days and a God more obsolete even than my body.

I am a man for the surface of the earth. Deep places, pits and holes in the ground make me nervous. Tall buildings and mountaintops terrify me.

I am not like a piercing fork nor a cutting knife nor a scooping spoon nor a flat, wily spatula that sneaks in from underneath. At most I'm a heavy and clumsy pestle that mashes good and evil together for the sake of a little flavor, a little fragrance.

Guideposts don't tell me where to go. I conduct my business quietly, diligently, as if carrying out a long will that began to be written the moment I was born.

Now I am standing on the sidewalk, weary, leaning on a parking meter. I can stand here for free, my own man.

I'm not a car, I'm a human being, a man-god, a god-man whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.

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 two-collections 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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