A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life -- Yehuda Amichai

Guest poem sent in by Abhishek Singh

(Poem #1398) A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life A man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn't have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that. A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love. And to hate and forgive and remember and forget, to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do. A man doesn't have time. When he loses he seeks, when he finds he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget. And his soul is seasoned, his soul is very professional. Only his body remains forever an amateur. It tries and it misses, gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing, drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains. He will die as figs die in autumn, Shriveled and full of himself and sweet, the leaves growing dry on the ground, the bare branches pointing to the place where there's time for everything. -- Yehuda Amichai

Note: From "The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai", translations by Chana
Bloch and Stephen Mitchell.

I was sent this poem by a friend of mine, who adores Amichai. Frankly
speaking, I had not heard of this late Israeli poet, before this poem. But
this one encounter was enough to put me in awe of his art.  What I found out
was that Amichai is the most translated poet in Hebrew after King David!
Like all translations something IS lost from one language to the other.
Amichai's poetry in fact either renders very well or not well at all into
English depending on the point of view taken. His poetry is simple, direct,
colloquial (my friend tells me that he is read by soldiers, shopkeepers...),
while also drawing on history and playing with words and sounds. The wit and
word-play are of course lost in English. In this poem for example, the
second-last stanza seems a bit ackward, with unwieldy words like
'professional' and 'amateur' breaking the flow, but the overall message of
the simplicity of the body and the sophistication of the soul is one that is
powerful beyond words.

Anyway I admit to not knowing a lot more about Amichai, but would love it if
someone told us more about him and his poetry. This write- up has been more
about the poet, because I think the poem itself is amazing enough to speak
for itself! Finally there's nothing more to be said, apart from the final
imagery...

"He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
...
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything."

Amichai died in 2000...you can light a candle in his memorium and
read more at http://www.ithl.org.il/amichai/

Abhishek

We've run one other poem by Amichai: Poem #1108

Biography: http://www.ithl.org.il/amichai/on.html