POEMS
YEHUDA AMICHAI
Mistake
When I was young I believed with all my heart
the Huleh swamp had to be drained.
Then all the bright-colored birds fled for their lives.
Now half a century later they're filling it with water again
because it was just a mistake. Maybe all my life
I've been living a mistake.
And the God of my childhood, he too
is a mistake, though he's still called God.
But the perfect mistake makes a perfect life,
like perfect faith. The saying, "Mistakes happen"
I've turned into a comforting song, and the verse
"All men are false" I've made into a dance tune by day,
a lullaby at night. Amen.
My
Gideon
How did Gideon in the Bible choose his army at the Spring of Harod?
He observed how they drank the water.
Three hundred lapped the water as a dog laps
and all the rest kneeled down to gulp. He chose the first.
But my Gideon kept on choosing: What is their way with a woman,
in what position do they make love? And how do they cry,
wi th a loud wailing or wi th silent tears,
and how do they eat and how do they sleep, on their belly like a baby,
on their side or on their back, and how do they remember their childhood?
