Amichai is regarded as Israel's best modern poet in a life that also included being a soldier in three of his country's last four wars and a professor of literature. His writing is ironic and direct, the imagery unforgettable. Reading his poems about war and love is profoundly affecting and helpful in understanding Israel (and Israelis) a little better. I had the privilege of meeting him when he was in Philadelphia a couple of years before his death from cancer in 2000. In this one, the last verse, particularly the last line, always brings a smile.
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A Precise Woman
(transl. from Hebrew)
A precise woman with a short haircut brings order
to my thoughts and my dresser drawers,
moves feelings around like furniture
into a new arrangement.
A woman whose body is cinched at the waist and firmly divided
into upper and lower,
with weather-forecast eyes
of shatterproof glass.
Even her cries of passion follow a certain order,
one after the other:
tame dove, then wild dove,
then peacock, wounded peacock, peacock, peacock,
the wild dove, tame dove, dove dove
thrush, thrush, thrush.
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A Precise Woman
(transl. from Hebrew)
A precise woman with a short haircut brings order
to my thoughts and my dresser drawers,
moves feelings around like furniture
into a new arrangement.
A woman whose body is cinched at the waist and firmly divided
into upper and lower,
with weather-forecast eyes
of shatterproof glass.
Even her cries of passion follow a certain order,
one after the other:
tame dove, then wild dove,
then peacock, wounded peacock, peacock, peacock,
the wild dove, tame dove, dove dove
thrush, thrush, thrush.
A precise woman: on the bedroom carpet
her shoes always point away from the bed.
(My own shoes point toward it.)
Yehuda Amichai (Jewish)
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