Sabbath Poem (Amichai)

JERUSALEM 1967
~ Yehuda Amichai

On Yom Kippur 5728, I donned
Dark holiday clothing and walked to Jerusalem’s Old City.
I stood for quite a while in front of the kiosk shop of an Arab,
Not far from Shchem (Nablus) Gate, a shop
full of buttons, zippers and spools of thread
Of every color; and snaps and buckles.
Brightly lit and many colored like the open Holy Ark.

I said to him in my heart that my father too
Owned a shop just like this of buttons and thread.
I explained to him in my heart about all the decades
And the reasons and the events leading me to be here now
While my father’s shop burned there and he is buried here.

When I concluded it was the hour of N’eilah (”locking the gates”).
He too drew down the shutters and locked the gate
As I returned homeward with all the other worshippers.

–from Achshav B’ Ra’ash (”Now, Noisily”) (Schocken, 1975), page 11-12 translation by Richard Silverstein

 

Flickr Photo by Oxana Nosach