Sunday, November 23, 2025

1198. North of San Francisco - Yehuda Amichai

 


    Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Blochr


Here the soft hills touch the ocean

like one eternity touching another

and the cows grazing on them

ignore us, like angels.

Even the scent of ripe melon in the cellar

is a prophecy of peace. 


The darkness does not war against the light,

it carries forward

to another light, and the only pain

is the pain of not staying. 


In my land, called holy,

they wont’t let eternity be:

they’ve divided it into little religions

zoned it for god-zones,

broken it into fragments of history,

sharp and wounding until death.

and they’ve turned in tranquil distances

into a closeness convulsing with the pain of the present.


On the beach at Bolinas, at the foot of the wooden steps,

I saw some girls lying in the sand bare-bottomed.

their heads bowed, drunk

on the kingdom everlasting,

their souls like doors

closing and opening inside them

to the rhythm of the surf.


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