I was at a loss of what to say in this week's newsletter after the shocking events in Israel. Instead of anything I could write, I decided to use the words of two Israeli poets. The first poem in two parts is by Yehuda Amichai. The poem is from 1947/48. His letters suggest that it could be about his first experience of combat. Its imagery of a school struck me as echoing the moment. The second poem by Yitzhak Lamdam evokes both the fear and the hope of Israel symbolized by Masada. And the last poem is a well know poem by Yehuda Amichai that needs no explanation.
michael
The first battles
A.
The first battles blossomed
terrible love flowers
with kisses almost as deadly as munitions.
In the beautiful buses of our town
boy soldiers are being hauled;
all the lines 12, 8, 5,
go to the war fronts.
B.
On the way to the front, we slept in a nursery school,
under my head a woolen teddy bear,
on my tired face, dreidels descended
and trumpets and dolls—
not angels,
my feet, in the heavy shoes,
knocked down a tower of colored blocks
that stood one on top of the other,
every block smaller than the one underneath it.
And in my head there was a mixture of large and small memories
making dreams in it
and on the other side of the window there were fires…
and likewise in my eyes under the lids
O God, Save Masada
Soften the hard rocks of Masada under their heads when they
do fatigue:
Do not let the cold hail of despair blast that which they have
sown here, the seed of souls and dreams.
Bid, O God, many rains of solace to fall upon it, and may the
dew fructify it at night,
Till it be rewarded with the promise of harvest.
For if this time again you will not be successful, O God,
Nor accept our dream, nor heed the offerings of those who strive
to make the dreams come true—
O God, save Masada.
Abridged from Masada by Yitzhak Lamdam, 1927; transl. Simon Halkin
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The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the howl of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.
