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Yehuda Amichai 1924 - 2000 | Poem

 

Yehuda Amichai 1924 - 2000


Wildpeace

  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. 

  Amichai read this poem at the 1994 awards ceremony in Oslo when Yitzhak     Rabin and Shimon Peres received the Nobel Peace Prize with Yasir Arafat.

In Memoriam