Yehuda Amichai

book-amichai-open

Griffin Poetry Prize 2001
International Shortlist

Book: Open Closed Open

Translators: Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

Poet: Yehuda Amichai

Publisher: Harcourt, Inc.

Click here to read and listen to an excerpt.

Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld read I, May I Rest in Peace

I, May I Rest in Peace, by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld translating Yehuda Amichai

I, May I Rest in Peace

I, may I rest in peace – I, who am still living, say,
May I have peace in the rest of my life.
I want peace right now while I’m still alive.
I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.
I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without
and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always
my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face.
Wars with the old weapons – sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,
dull ripping knife, love and hate,
and wars with newfangled weapons – machine gun, missile,
words, land mines exploding, love and hate.
I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war.
I want peace with all my body and all my soul.
Rest me in peace.

From Open Closed Open, by Yehuda Amichai
Copyright © 2000 by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

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