Tikkun Magazine, May/June 2008

ISRAEL 60 YEARS LATER

Wildpeace 

by Yehuda Amichai

Trans. Chana Bloch

Not the peace of a cease-fire,

not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
 
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

Reprinted with permission from The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, by Yehuda 

Amichai (trans. and edited by Chana Block and Stephen Mitchell), (c) 1996 The Regents 

of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press. 

Source Citation
 Amichai, Yehuda. Chana Block, trans. 2008. Wildpeace. Tikkun. 23(3):31.