Yehuda Amichai

2

We lived in many houses and left remnants of memory

in every one of them: a newspaper, a book face-down, a crumpled map

of some faraway land, a forgotten toothbrush standing sentinel in a cup –

that too is a memorial candle, an eternal light.

Life, I think, is a series of rehearsals

for the real show. In a rehearsal you can still

make changes, cut out a sentence, add a line

of dialogue, switch

actors, directors, theaters—up until the real show.

Then there is no changing. And it makes no difference

that you can’t make a difference:

The show closes right after opening night.

1

The flight attendants of the next millennium came to me and said:

You can still get a seat on the third millennium before liftoff.

Come with us, dead or alive, we’ll take you along. We have no malice,

no defenses, but we’re strong and mobile as constellations,

our eyes are closed but we can see.

We are women who glide between life and death.

You with your seat belts and gear belts and buckles that click shut,

you, sir, you with the noise of a door closing,

we with our voices of glide and whisper.

Our belts are not for safety or holding up our clothes,

they are snakes, they are not decoration. Gliding spirals,

we are acrobats looping the loops of wish and would.

You with your warm worries and emotions

heavy as cow dung in the field,

you with the sweat of your death like an afterlife perfume.

I, may I rest in peace – I, who am still living, say,

May I have peace in the rest of my life.

I want peace right now while I’m still alive.

I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg

of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair

right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.

I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without

and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always

my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face.

Wars with the old weapons – sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,

dull ripping knife, love and hate,

and wars with newfangled weapons – machine gun, missile,

words, land mines exploding, love and hate.

I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war.

I want peace with all my body and all my soul.

Rest me in peace.

On my desk there is a stone with the word “Amen” on it,

a triangular fragment of stone from a Jewish graveyard destroyed

many generations ago. The other fragments, hundreds upon hundreds,

were scattered helter-skelter, and a great yearning,

a longing without end, fills them all:

first name in search of family name, date of death seeks

dead man’s birthplace, son’s name wishes to locate

name of father, date of birth seeks reunion with soul

that wishes to rest in peace. And until they have found

one another, they will not find a perfect rest.

Only this stone lies calmly on my desk and says “Amen.”

But now the fragments are gathered up in lovingkindness

by a sad good man. He cleanses them of every blemish,

photographs them one by one, arranges them on the floor

in the great hall, makes each gravestone whole again,

one again: fragment to fragment,

like the resurrection of the dead, a mosaic,

a jigsaw puzzle. Child’s play.