Half the people in the world love the other half, <br />half the people hate the other half. <br />Must I because of this half and that half go wandering <br />and changing ceaselessly like rain in its cycle, <br />must I sleep among rocks, and grow rugged like <br />the trunks of olive trees, <br />and hear the moon barking at me, <br />and camouflage my love with worries, <br />and sprout like frightened grass between the railroad <br />tracks, <br />and live underground like a mole, <br />and remain with roots and not with branches, and not <br />feel my cheek against the cheek of angels, and <br />love in the first cave, and marry my wife <br />beneath a canopy of beams that support the earth, <br />and act out my death, always till the last breath and <br />the last words and without ever understanding, <br />and put flagpoles on top of my house and a bomb shelter <br />underneath. And go out on raids made only for <br />returning and go through all the appalling <br />stations—cat,stick,fire,water,butcher, <br />between the kid and the angel of death? <br />Half the people love, <br />half the people hate. <br />And where is my place between such well-matched halves, <br />and through what crack will I see the white housing <br />projects of my dreams and the bare foot runners <br />on the sands or, at least, the waving of a girl's <br />kerchief, beside the mound? <br /> <br /> <br />Translated by Chana Bloch And Stephen Mitchell<br /><br />Yehuda Amichai<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/half-the-people-in-the-world/
