Poetry Week: Yehuda Amichai

At the Seashore
trans. by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell

The pain-people think that God is the god of joy,
the joy-people think that God is the god of pain.
The coast-people think that love is in the mountains,
and the mountain-people think that love is at the seashore
so they go down to the sea.

The waves bring back even things we haven't lost.
I choose a smooth pebble and say over it,
"I'll never see that one again."
Eternity makes more sense
in the negative:
"I'll never see. I'll never come back."

So what good will it do you to get a tan? You'll be
a sadness, roasted and beautiful, an enticing scent.

When we came up from the seashore, we didn't see the water
but near the new road we saw a deep pit
and beside it a huge wooden spool wound with heavy cable:
all the conversations of the future, all the silences.