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ShareYehuda Amichai
Time for everything.
He has no room to have room
For every desire. Ecclesiastes was wrong to claim that.
With the same eyes to cry and to laugh
With the same hands to throw stones
And to gather them,
Make love in war and war in love.
And order and confuse and eat and digest
What long history does
In so many years.
When he loses he seeks
When he finds he forgets
When he forgets he loves
When he loves he begins forgetting.
And very professional,
Only his body remains an amateur
He doesn’t learn and gets confused,
Drunk and blind in his pleasures and pains.
Shriveled, sweet, full of himself.
The leaves dry out on the ground,
And the naked branches point
To the place where there is time for everything.
(א) שתים עשרה פשוטות
ה"ו ז"ח ט"י ל"נ ס"ע צ"ק
יסודן
ראיה שמיעה ריחה
שיחה לעיטה תשמיש
מעשה הלוך רוגז
שחוק הרהור שינה.
(1) Twelve Simples:
Heh-Waw Zayin-Chet Tet-Yod Lamed-Nun ʽAyin-Samekh Tzadi-Qof
Their foundation
is Seeing, Hearing, Smelling,
Talking, Eating, Sexuality,
Action, Movement, Agitation,
Laughter, Contemplation, and Sleep.
(50) 50. The Rabbi: The divine law imposes no asceticism on us. It rather desires that we should keep the equipoise, and grant every mental and physical faculty its due, as much as it can bear, without overburdening one faculty at the expense of another. If a person gives way to licentiousness he blunts his mental faculty; he who is inclined to violence injures some other faculty. Prolonged fasting is no act of piety for a weak person who, having succeeded in checking his desires, is not greedy. For him feasting is a burden and self-denial. Neither is diminution of wealth an act of piety, if it is gained in a lawful way, and if its acquisition does not interfere with study and good works, especially for him who has a household and children. He may spend part of it in almsgiving, which would not be displeasing to God; but to increase it is better for himself. Our law, as a whole, is divided between fear, love, and joy, by each of which one can approach God....
Marge Piercy
To shape into words that steal time, that touch
Like hands and pierce like bullets, that waken
Truth and deceit, sorrow and pity and joy,
That waste precious air in complaints, in lies,
In floating traps for power on the dirty air.
Yet holy breath still stretches our lungs to sing
We are given the body, that momentary gathering
Of elements that have belonged to frog and polar
Bear, corn and oak tree, volcano and glacier.
We are lent for a time these minerals in water
And a morning every day, a morning to wake up,
Rejoice and praise life in our spines, our throats,
Our knees, our genitals, our brains, our tongues...
