I Was the Moon
My child is so sad.
I teach him:
Geography of loves,
Foreign languages he cannot hear
Because of the distance.
My child shakes his little bed up to me
At night. I teach him.
More than forgetting. The language of forgetting.
By the time he understands my deeds, I'll be dead.
What are you doing with our quiet child?
You cover him with a blanket,
Like the sky. A layer of clouds.
I could have been the moon.
What are you doing with you sad fingers?
You cover them with a glove
And leave.
I was the moon.
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Amichai, Yehuda. Yehuda Amichai: A Life of Poetry 1948-1994.
trans. Benjamin & Barbara Harshav. (HarperCollins Publishers, 1994).
Yehuda Amichai (1924- ), widely considered to be the
most
prominent poet in Israel, was born in 1924 in Wurtzburg, Germany,
and emigrated to Israel in 1936. As a modern poet, Amichai's work
confronts the issue of identity, including a preoccupation with
self-definition. Another important element found in Amichai's
work is the concept of time, in which pre-modernism saw time as a
linear construct, and which now (in "post-modernism"), can be
viewed as malleable. His language resonates with biblical
allusions, but his real power lies in his ability to depict human
suffering and human emotion.
(Information taken from www.daytips.com)