National Poetry Month
On a Poem by Yehudah Amichai
by J.D. Arden, M.L.I.S. candidate, Reference Services Research Intern, Center for Jewish History

The poem “First Resurrection” (תחייה ראשונה) is from the poem cycle “Four Resurrections in the Valley of the Ghosts” by Yehudah Amichai (יהודה עמיחי 1924-2000), read in Hebrew above by writer Leon Wieseltier as part of the “CultureBuzz” Amichai poetry series on YouTube.

The English translation below is from the book Yehuda Amichai: A Life of Poetry, 1948-1994.

More books by Yehuda Amichai and Leon Wieseltier are available to discover at the Center for Jewish History. You can search the collections by clicking here. 

First Resurrection

A woman who looks like my mother sees a man who looks like me,
They pass each other without turning around.

Mistakes are marvelous and simple as life and death,
As the arithmetic book of a small child.

In the shelter for wayward girls, girls singing on the balcony 
Hang their clothes out to dry, banners of love.

In the fiber institute they make ropes of fiber
To bind souls in the bundle of life.

An afternoon wind blows, as if asking:
What did you do, what did you talk about.

In old stone houses young women do in the day
What mothers of their mothers dreamed of doing at night.

The Armenian church is empty and closed
Like an abandoned wife whose husband went far off and disappeared.

Wayward girls sing, “God will bring the dead to life
In His great mercy” and fold their dried clothes.
“Blessed forever be His name.”