You mustn't show weakness <br />and you've got to have a tan. <br />But sometimes I feel like the thin veils <br />of Jewish women who faint <br />at weddings and on Yom Kippur. <br /> <br />You mustn't show weakness <br />and you've got to make a list <br />of all the things you can load <br />in a baby carriage without a baby. <br /> <br />This is the way things stand now: <br />if I pull out the stopper <br />after pampering myself in the bath, <br />I'm afraid that all of Jerusalem, and with it the whole world, <br />will drain out into the huge darkness. <br /> <br />In the daytime I lay traps for my memories <br />and at night I work in the Balaam Mills, <br />turning curse into blessing and blessing into curse. <br /> <br />And don't ever show weakness. <br />Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself <br />without anyone noticing. I'm like an ambulance <br />on two legs, hauling the patient <br />inside me to Last Aid <br />with the wailing of cry of a siren, <br />and people think it's ordinary speech. <br /> <br /> <br />Translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell<br /><br />Yehuda Amichai<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-mustn-t-show-weakness/
