Yehuda Amichai in
Late November
Do not write the poem
of love in the night of love;
as you lie in the
arms of your beloved, love!
Soon enough your
passions will be done
and you will have
nothing left but your love
of words for
comfort. How it always happens:
the day he deploys,
the soldier falls in love.
Americans write such
boring poems because
your wars are so
abstract, as are your loves.
If you want to become
a poet, be a warrior
trained to crave
neither praise nor love.
Dead for a decade,
Yehuda still chides
from the workshop
table. But look, my love,
violets bloom in this
autumn ditch like advice
to trick time: let’s
make language and love at once.
Letter to Dad from
New Danville, PA
When I can no longer stand
to read or write in any
chair
or couch in the house,
I bank the fire and head out
into the night, slither
between electric fence lines
and climb a ridge where you
can see lights
from Lancaster city all the
way
to the black Susquehanna.
I lie down there under
Orion’s belt
until snow melts through my
hair
to the back of my
neck. This is the best
thing you ever taught
me: to stop
and stretch out under tree
limbs or clouds.
I almost forgot how good a
pasture feels
beneath a sore back. And
these evil days
when you can’t say who will
sign your check
or for how long, as friends
of thirty years
get canned or quit or just
turn silent,
you must walk out onto that
smooth swath
of Westinghouse lawn and lie
down. Think
how the sky will open above
you. Think
how the ground will hold you
as it always has, as it
certainly will
until it takes you once and
for all.