Open Closed Open Poems [Paperback]

In poems marked by tenderness and mischief, humanity and humor, Yehuda Amichai breaks open the grand diction of revered Jewish verses and casts the light of his own experi­ence upon them. Here he tells of history, a nation, the self, love, and resurrection. Amichai’s last volume is one of medi­tation and hope, and stands as a testament to one of Israel’s greatest poets.
 
Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is open
in the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closed
within us. And when we die, everything is open again.
Open closed open. That’s all we are.




—from“I WASN’T ONE OF THE SIX MILLION:
   AND WHAT IS MY LIFE SPAN? OPEN CLOSED OPEN”

“He is one of our great poets . . . once one has heard his quiet, even tones, precise, distanced and passionate, one never forgets them. -The Times Literary Supplement “Open Closed Open is the uncanny record of genuine inspiration. Happy is the man who has so much in his soul. -Leon Wieseltier “Poets have always talked reverently about unlocking the human heart, but when “I read Amichai I wonder who before him actually managed it. -Ted Hughes

I Wasn’t One of the Six Million:
And What Is My Life Span?
Open Closed Open
1
My life is the gardener of my body. The brain—a hothouse closed tight
with its flowers and plants, alien and odd
in their sensitivity, their terror of becoming extinct.
The face—a formal French garden of symmetrical contours
and circular paths of marble with statues and places to rest,
places to touch and smell, to look out from, to lose yourself
in a green maze, and Keep Off and Don’t Pick the Flowers.
The upper body above the navel—an English park
pretending to be free, no angles, no paving stones, naturelike,
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