POET'S CHOICE

in Jewish graveyards. I know all these broken pieces

now fill the great Jewish time bomb

along with the other fragments and shrapnel, broken Tablets of the Law

broken altars broken crosses rusty crucifixion nails

broken houseware and holyware and broken bones

eyeglasses shoes prostheses false teeth

empty cans of lethal poison. All these broken pieces

fill the Jewish time bomb until the end of days.

And though I know about all this, and about the end of days,

the stone on my desk gives me peace.

It is the touchstone no one touches, more philosophical

than any philosopher's stone, broken stone from a broken tomb

more whole than any wholeness,

a stone of witness to what has always been

and what will always be, a stone of amen and love.

Amen, amen, and may it come to pass.

These two poems meditating on the same symbolic object offer variations on a profound theme, but with some playful turns. It's part of Amichai's syncretic genius, and his poise, that he can so dryly include Holocaust imagery such as the empty cans of lethal poison, the eyeglasses and the false teeth. The ironic, understated phrase "child's play" ends the first poem by denoting simplicity after invoking an infinity of loss. The simplicity that resolves the second poem, in its way also understated, is not ironic. Wholeheartedly, in the last words of his last book, Amichai joins the voices he hears in a triangle of graveyard stone, voicing the most traditional of words.

(Yehuda Amichai's poems "The Amen Stone" and "The Jewish Time Bomb" are from his book "Open Closed Open: Poems," translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kornfeld. Harvest. © 2000 by Yehuda Amichai. Translation © 2000 by Chana Bloch and Chana Kornfeld.)