Five Poems For The Days of Awe
THE GATES OF COMPASSION My thoughts rouse me to behold You; they show Your fearsome deeds to my heart's eye; they teach me to recite Your wonders—when I look up at Your heavens, the work of Your...
...Later...
...the pain of parting from his cultural environment, the perilous sea voyage—all these topics were uncommon in the poetry of the time...
...ON THE DAY OF ATONEMENT YEHUDA AMKHAI On the Day of Atonement in 1967, I put on my dark holiday suit and went to the Old City in Jerusalem...
...T. Carmi has published eight volumes of poetry in Hebrew...
...a native ?? Bialykamicn (Galieia...
...Is the word of comfort and support so far from us...
...And I am so afraid of my eyes' terror, faced by blood on the leaves...
...Yehuda Amichai (b 1924...
...His heavily charged idiom draws on the resources of biblical prophecy, medieval dirges and kabbalistic symbolism...
...His poetic corpus of secular and sacred works consists of over a thousand compositions which attest to an unrivaled mastery of language and musical patterns and a profound lyrical expression of religious and national themes...
...And how can I worship my Maker while I am still captive to my lust, slave to my desire...
...I told him in my heart that my father, too, had such a shop of threads and buttons...
...Is God's love gone for ever...
...FOR THE DOT JUDAH OF ATONEMENT HA1EVI Lord, all my longing is before You, even though it does not pass my lips...
...In 1915 he was drafted into the Austrian arms and served on the Serbian front Two years later he deserted and returned to I un, where he witnessed the Polish pogroms...
...And the earth is fixed in the centre, suspended from the cords of Your love...
...The days and nights have pledged to consume my flesh, to scatter half of me to the winds and return the other half to the dust...
...Is there no healer, no balm in Gilead, to strengthen the heart of a faltering child who knocks at the gates of Your compassion...
...The thunderous clouds are heavy with rivers...
...The Angels of Peace stand at the head of my sleeping children, as the trees moan and the heavy rains pour down...
...Halevi arrived in Alexandria and was What more can I say...
...I am stripped naked, devoid of good works, and only Your righteousness is my covering...
...At an early age he travelled to the centers of Jewish scholarship in Andalusia In Granada, he formed a lasting friendship with Moses ibn Ezra which is recorded in a moving exchange of poems...
...Halevi settled in Toledo, the capital of Castile under Alfonso VI...
...Shortly before his departure he completed his influential treatise The Book of Argument and Pnntf in Defense of the Despised Faith...
...And I wanted to scream, writhing not to believe, and tearing open my eyes...
...When I am far from You my life is death...
...The longing for Zion...
...He was the first to write homommic poems, on the model of the Arabic minis...
...It deals at length with poetics and the theory of "ornamentation" and describes the rhetorical figures In keeping with the ideal of tsachot ("purity" of rhetoric), these figures arc primarily illustrated by reference to ihc Bible...
...and the members of his family dispersed...
...a consummate craftsman and ihc leading theoretician of the Spanish school, was horn in (iranada...
...1917), a native of Ra/ywilow (the Ukraine), studied in a Hebreu gymnasium and came to Palestine in 1937 as an illegal immigrant He worked intermittently in kibbutzim, stone quarries and British army camps before joining the Jewish Brigade (1942...
...My passions hound me like an enemy from youth to withered old age...
...The blood of the covenant sings on in the father's fervent body...
...on the borders of Christian Spain...
...And I woke up...
...an embittered refugee in search of patrons...
...What can equal this glory, this wondrous zeal—alive since that ancient dawn to this very moment—for the Mount of Moriah...
...He has played a leading role in the creation of the new idiom, which shows clear affinities to modern English poetry in its use of irony and understatement, and its juxtaposition of contrasting linguistic materials...
...AMIR GILBOA At dawn, the sun strolled in the forest together with me and father, and my right hand was in his left...
...He emigrated to Palestine in 1423 as a sympathizer of the Socialist Labor movement, hut in the wake of the Arab riots of 1929 joined the extremist Revisionist Party...
...My youth has thus far had its pleasure, but when shall I, too, provide for my household...
...received a Chassidic upbringing in Lvov...
...During Israel's struggle for national independence, he was active in the ranks of the Irgun Tseva'i Le'umi, and in 1949 was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Hcrut Parts His poetry reveals a passionate identification of personal experience with Jewish messianic destiny, and a deep-rooted belief in the eternal enmity between "the Star of David" and "the Cross and the Crescent...
...Some of his long secular poems suffer from excessive ornamentation However, his shorter meditative pieces and his sensual love poems are compact and beautiful...
...Uri Zvi Greenberg (b...
...Grant me Your favour for even a moment, and I will die...
...Outside: Jerusalem, and the moaning of the Lord's trees, cut down by her enemies in every generation...
...came lo Jerusalem with his family in I9J6...
...Copyright 19X0 by ? Carmi...
...Muses Ibn K/raK 1055-after 1135...
...perhaps, his most famous works...
...Translated from Arabic into Hebrew' in the twelfth century, it came to be known as The Book of the ku:ari because it is composed as a dialogue between a Jewish scholar (the chawr) and the king of the kh.i/.irs who had converted lo Judaism in the eighth century...
...Two protracted stays in Poland (1931-5, 1939) strengthened his premonition of the impending tragedy...
...In September 1140...
...Then why do I go on wagging my tongue and pleading...
...It is not known why Ibn E/ra, isolated and impoverished, remained in Granada...
...In early manifestos and in some of his poetry he sharply rejected "European aesthetics...
...And if You are not my lot, what other lot do I have...
...received with great acclaim...
...a native of Wuhrzburg...
...THE GATES OF COMPASSION My thoughts rouse me to behold You...
...How can I be cheerful on a happy day, when I do not know if there will be happiness tomorrow...
...The heavenly spheres move in their course, turning like a potter's wheel, telling Your glory without lips...
...He served with the Jewish Brigade in the Second Wurld War and as an infantryman in the War of Independence...
...How can I aspire to a high rank, when tomorrow the worm will be my sister...
...where he practised medicine, apparently in the service of the king...
...He has received the Prime Minister's Award for Creative Writing, the Shlonsky Prize for Poetry and the Brenner Prize for Literature...
...mir (>ilh.u (b...
...I stood, for some time, before the alcove of an Arab's shop, not far from Damascus Gate, a shop of buttons and zippers and spools of thread in all colours, and snaps and buckles...
...And my right hand was drained of blood...
...Show me Your ways...
...Lather, father, quickly save Isaac so that no one will be missing at the midday meal...
...I will commit my spirit into Your keeping, I will sleep, and my sleep will be pleasant...
...Does Time hold anything for me except Your favour...
...many of which found a place of honor in synagogue rites...
...Juduh Halevi (before 1075-aftcr 1141) was horn in Muslim fudela...
...If God were to command me now, as once He did my ancient Father, I would surely obey,' sing my heart and my flesh on this night of rain, as the Angels of Peace stand at the head of my sleeping children...
...He died six months later, after a period of intensive creativity...
...No Hebrew poet since the Psalmists had sung the praises of the Holy Land with such passion...
...before 1 journey to where my fathers have gone, and come to rest where they are resting...
...But I do not know what to offer You, what my service and my worship should be...
...where he was granted an honorific Arabic title...
...It is I who am being slaughtered, my son, and already my blood is on the leaves...
...He too pulled down the shutter and locked the gate, and I went back home with all the worshippers...
...A glorious light and a great many colours like a Holy Ark with its doors ajar...
...18...
...they teach me to recite Your wonders—when I look up at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers...
...I am like a stranger upon the earth, but my true home is in her womb...
...it bestows some of its light on the moon...
...He published poems in both Yiddish and Hebrew and was a prominent member of a Yiddish avaru-gardr expressionist group centered in Warsaw and Berlin...
...after an arduous voyage...
...The poems and accompanying notes in this section are taken from the forthcoming Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi...
...For the next forty years he wandered through "the exile of hdom...
...He has consistently been one of the most original and experimental Israeli poets, combining traditional elements with colloquial usages, and personal concerns with national motifs...
...That Tire, kindled at dawn, still burns on the hill, the rains have not put it out: it is the fire between the sacrificial pieces...
...In 1090 the Jewish community was destroyed by Ihc Berber Almora-vids...
...clouds heavy with rain, lightnings in them and thunders which, for me, on this night of rain, are tidings from the mouth of the God of Might to endless generations...
...In his extensive liturgical poetry, he deftly wove together Jewish religious and Arabic secular elements...
...at the hands of ( linsii.in mercenaries, and the attacks upon the Jews in Toledo in the following sear, prompted him to return to the Muslim area, where he made his home in Cordoba...
...before I yield unwillingly, and my bones wither and are unable to bear me...
...The world and its delights, which He put in my heart, have kept me from seeking my aim...
...His experiences during the campaigns in Egypt...
...I explained to him in my heart all about the tens of years and the reasons and the circumstances because of which 1 am now here and my father's shop is in ashes there, and he is buried here...
...Teach me while I still have the strength to endure—do not scorn my plight!— before I become a burden to myself and my limbs weigh heavy on each other...
...However, the murder in 1108 of his benefactor, Solomon ibn Kerri/uel...
...North Africa and Italy inspired many of the poems in his early books...
...His "songs of Zion" are...
...Outside: Jerusalem, city of the Father's glorious trial, where he bound his son on one of the hills...
...the dome of heaven is spread out like a tent, with stars upon it like a flowering garden—all to display Your fathomless thoughts...
...O Lord, restore me from the bondage of folly...
...Like lightning a knife flashed among the trees...
...If only You would grant my wish...
...About five years later his life was endangered in a m>s-lerious episode involving his elder brother's daughter, and he lied to C hristian Spain...
...His poems, novels and short stories have been widely translated...
...O Lord, all my longing is before You...
...He is prepared to offer his sacrifice on the Temple Mount at dawn...
...The sun hastens to its place to rise again...
...His personal experiences in Christian and Muslim Spain during the Rcconqucst ("Between the armies of Scir and Kcdar my army is lost . . . when they Tight their wars, we fall in their downfall"), and his philosophical views concerning the meaning of diaspora and the path to redemption, culminated in his decision to emigrate to the Holy Land...
...but if I cling to You, my death is life...
...ON A NIGHT OF RAIN IN JERUSALEM URIZVI GREENBERG The few trees in the yard moan like a forest...
...He came to be known as Hasatach ("the supplicant") in acknowledgement of his moving selichot...
...And father's voice was smothered and his face was pale...
...Towards the end of his life he composed his Arabic treatise The Btx>k of Conversations and Memories This unique work, based on Arabic poetics, is an invaluable source for the history of Andalusian Hebrew poetry...
...By the lime I had finished, it was the hour of "the locking of the Gates...
Vol. 5 • September 1980 • No. 8
