What Kind Of A Person Poem by Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai

Würzburg / Germany
follow poet
Yehuda Amichai
Würzburg / Germany
follow poet

What Kind Of A Person

Rating: 4.5


"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me.
I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul,
Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system
Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century,
But with an old body from ancient times
And with a God even older than my body.
I'm a person for the surface of the earth.
Low places, caves and wells
Frighten me. Mountain peaks
And tall buildings scare me.
I'm not like an inserted fork,
Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.

I'm not flat and sly
Like a spatula creeping up from below.
At most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle
Mashing good and bad together
For a little taste
And a little fragrance.

Arrows do not direct me. I conduct
My business carefully and quietly
Like a long will that began to be written
The moment I was born.

s Now I stand at the side of the street
Weary, leaning on a parking meter.
I can stand here for nothing, free.

I'm not a car, I'm a person,
A man-god, a god-man
Whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.


Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Be the first one to comment on this poem!
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai

Würzburg / Germany
follow poet
Yehuda Amichai
Würzburg / Germany
follow poet
Close
Error Success