A Pace Like That

I'm looking at the lemon tree I planted. A year ago. I'd need a different pace, a slower one, to observe the growth of its branches, its leaves as they open. I want a pace like that. Not like reading a newspaper but the way a child learns to read, or the way you quietly decipher the inscription on an ancient tombstone.

And what a Torah scroll takes an entire year to do as it rolls its way from Genesis to the death of Moses, I do each day in haste

or in sleepless nights, rolling over from side to side. The longer you live, the more people there are who comment on your actions. Like a worker in a manhole: at the opening above him people stand around giving free advice and yelling instructions,

but he's all alone down there in his depths.

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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