Memorial day for the war dead. Add now <br />the grief of all your losses to their grief, <br />even of a woman that has left you. Mix <br />sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history, <br />which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning <br />on one day for easy, convenient memory. <br /> <br />Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread, <br />in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God. <br />"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding." <br />No use to weep inside and to scream outside. <br />Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding. <br /> <br />Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up <br />as a little girl with flowers. <br />The streets are cordoned off with ropes, <br />for the marching together of the living and the dead. <br />Children with a grief not their own march slowly, <br />like stepping over broken glass. <br /> <br />The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days. <br />A dead soldier swims above little heads <br />with the swimming movements of the dead, <br />with the ancient error the dead have <br />about the place of the living water. <br /> <br />A flag loses contact with reality and flies off. <br />A shopwindow is decorated with <br />dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white. <br />And everything in three languages: <br />Hebrew, Arabic, and Death. <br /> <br />A great and royal animal is dying <br />all through the night under the jasmine <br />tree with a constant stare at the world. <br /> <br />A man whose son died in the war walks in the street <br />like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb. <br />"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."<br /><br />Yehuda Amichai<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/memorial-day-for-the-war-dead/
