April 02, 2006
Poetry for April
April is National Poetry Month, a time to specially emphasize a very satisfying genre.
Photo by Kevin T. Houle
From The New Yorker 3/27/2006:
Some Lines Against the Light
How awful the light is for the eyes.
How awful it is to be flooded with light,
how unpleasant to be David's Citadel or the Wailing Wall
or an actor
or something like that.
How awful is the light left on in the henhouse
by wily farmers
so that the hens will lay and lay
thinking it is forever day.
How awful of the light in this way to sow feelings,
to be leaping, always to begin loving anew,
to spew love.
Sometimes I stumble into history
the way a small animal, a rabbit or a fox,
stumbles into a passing car's beam of light.
Sometimes I am the driver.
Yehuda Amichai
Translated, from the Hebrew, by Leon Wieseltier.
From The New Yorker 3/27/2006:
Some Lines Against the Light
How awful the light is for the eyes.
How awful it is to be flooded with light,
how unpleasant to be David's Citadel or the Wailing Wall
or an actor
or something like that.
How awful is the light left on in the henhouse
by wily farmers
so that the hens will lay and lay
thinking it is forever day.
How awful of the light in this way to sow feelings,
to be leaping, always to begin loving anew,
to spew love.
Sometimes I stumble into history
the way a small animal, a rabbit or a fox,
stumbles into a passing car's beam of light.
Sometimes I am the driver.
Yehuda Amichai
Translated, from the Hebrew, by Leon Wieseltier.
posted @ 10:04 AM
