Yehuda Amichai in
Late November

 

Do not write the poem of love in the night of love;

as you lie in the arms of your beloved, love!

 

Soon enough your passions will be done

and you will have nothing left but your love

 

of words for comfort.  How it always happens:

the day he deploys, the soldier falls in love.

 

Americans write such boring poems because 

your wars are so abstract, as are your loves.

 

If you want to become a poet, be a warrior

trained to crave neither praise nor love.

 

Dead for a decade, Yehuda still chides

from the workshop table.  But look, my love,

 

violets bloom in this autumn ditch like advice 

to trick time:  let’s make language and love at once. 

 

 

Letter to Dad from
New Danville, PA

 

When I can no longer stand 

to read or write in any chair

or couch in the house,

I bank the fire and head out

into the night, slither

between electric fence lines

and climb a ridge where you can see lights

from Lancaster city all the way

to the black Susquehanna.

I lie down there under Orion’s belt

until snow melts through my hair

to the back of my neck.  This is the best

thing you ever taught me:  to stop

and stretch out under tree limbs or clouds.

I almost forgot how good a pasture feels

beneath a sore back.  And these evil days

when you can’t say who will sign your check

or for how long, as friends of thirty years

get canned or quit or just turn silent,

you must walk out onto that smooth swath

of Westinghouse lawn and lie down.  Think

how the sky will open above you.  Think

how the ground will hold you

as it always has, as it certainly will

until it takes you once and for all.