POET'S CHOICE

But now the fragments are gathered up in lovingkindness

by a sad good man. He cleanses them of every blemish,

photographs them one by one, arranges them on the floor

in the great hall, makes each gravestone whole again,

one again: fragment to fragment,

like the resurrection of the dead, a mosaic,

a jigsaw puzzle. Child's play.

The same stone fragment recurs in the middle of this carefully plotted book and then again in its final poem, "The Jewish Time Bomb." Brooding once more on the carved word of assent, Amichai extends it over epochs of suffering to the universal last day:

On my desk is a stone with "Amen" carved on it, one survivor fragment

of the thousands upon thousands of bits of broken tombstones