re-reading Yehuda Amichai

a poetry game on facebook made me seek out a book of Amichai's poems that i bought 37 years ago when i was 17.

when i first read this poem the book was new and had that new book smell, today it smells wonderfully musty.


If With a Bitter Mouth

If with a bitter mouth you will speak
Sweet words, the world will
Neither sweeten nor become more bitter.

And it is written in the book that we shall not fear.
And it is also written, that we shall change,
Like the words,
In future and in past,
Plural*or alone.

And soon in the coming nights,
We shall appear, like strolling players
Each in the other's dream.

And into these dreams
There shall also come strangers
We did not know together.

by Yehuda Amichai

* if i had been translating this i think i would have used the word 'together'.