The author (1924-2000) was Israel's most popular poet, as well as a literary figure of international reputation. In this collection, renowned translators Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell have selected his most beloved poems, including forty poems from his later work.

Foreword 2013 by C. K. Williams Foreword 1996 by Chana Bloch PART ONE edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell From Now and in Other Days (1955) God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children The U.N. Headquarters in the High Commissioner's House in Jerusalem Autobiography, 1952 The Smell of Gasoline Ascends in My Nose Six Poems for Tamar Yehuda Ha-Levi Ibn Gabirol When I Was a Child Look: Thoughts and Dreams From We Loved Here From Two Hopes Away (1958) God's Hand in the World Sort of an Apocalypse And That Is Your Glory Of Three or Four in a Room Not Like a Cypress Through Two Points Only One Straight Line Can Pass Half the People in the World For My Birthday Two Photographs Poems for a Woman Children's Procession Ballad of the Washed Hair Sonnet from the Voyage The Visit of the Queen of Sheba From In a Right Angle: A Cycle of Quatrains From Poems, 1948-1962 As for the World In the Middle of This Century Farewell, Such as Sorrow Jerusalem Before And as Far as Abu Ghosh You Too Cot Tired The Place Where We Are Right Mayor Resurrection From Summer or Its End In the Full Severity of Mercy Too Many Poem for Arbor Day Jacob and the Angel Here Elegy on an Abandoned Village The Elegy on the Lost Child From Now in the Storm, Poems 1963-1968 Jerusalem, 1967 The Bull Returns A Luxury To Bake the Bread of Yearning National Thoughts A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention Elegy Threading Now in the Storm Travels of the Last Benjamin of Tudela PART TWO edited and translated by Chana Bloch From Not for the Sake of Remembering (1971) Jews in the Land of Israel Wildpeace The Way It Was Instead of Words Gifts of Love Ballad in the Streets of Buenos Aires Psalm From Behind All This a Great Happiness Is Hiding (1976) Seven Laments for the War-Dead Like the Inner Wall of a House Love Song I've Grown Very Hairy A Dog After Love A Bride Without a Dowry The Sweet Breakdowns of Abigail To a Convert My Father in a White Space Suit A Letter of Recommendation On the Day I Left A Letter In a Leap Year A Quiet Joy A Mutual Lullaby From Songs of Zion the Beautiful From Time (1978) Songs of Continuity At the Monastery of Latroun When I Was Young, the Whole Country Was Young I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once To My Love, Combing Her Hair The Diameter of the Bomb When I Banged My Head on the Door You Carry the Weight of Heavy Buttocks Advice for Good Love You Are So Small and Slight in the Rain A Man Like That on a Bald Mountain in Jerusalem When a Man's Far Away from His Country The Eve of Rosh Hashanah I've Already Been Weaned In the Garden, at the White Table From the Book of Esther I Filtered the Sediment So I Went Down to the Ancient Harbor Now the Lifeguards Have All Gone Home Near the Wall of a House From A Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers (1980) You Can Rely on Him You Mustn't Show Weakness Lost Objects Forgetting Someone "The Rustle of History's Wings," as They Used to Say Then 1978 Reunion of Palmach Veterans at Ma'ayan Harod An Eternal Window There Are Candles That Remember On the Day My Daughter Was Born No One Died All These Make a Dance Rhythm In the Morning It Was Still Night A Child Is Something Else Again When I Have a Stomachache I Feel Just Fine in My Pants Jerusalem Is Full of Used Jews Ecology of Jerusalem In the Old City Tourists An Arab Shepherd Is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion A Song of Lies on Sabbath Eve The Parents Left the Child Love Is Finished Again End of Summer in the Judean Mountains Relativity Poem Without an End A Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers From The Hour of Grace (1983) 1924 Half-Sized Violin A Pace Like That The Box The Last Word Is the Captain Statistics The Hour of Grace What a Complicated Mess I Lost My Identity Card On Mount Muhraka Summer Begins Hamadiya At the Seashore On Some Other Planet You May Be Right Autumn Rain in Tel Aviv A Flock of Sheep Near the Airport Almost a Love Poem They Are All Dice A Precise Woman Jasmine Kibbutz Gevaram History The Real Hero At the Maritime Museum Try to Remember Some Details A Man in His Life From From Man Thou Art and Unto Man Shalt Thou Return (1985) My Mother Comes from the Days Now She's Breathing My Mother Died on Shavuot The Body Is the Cause of Love Orchard Late Marriage Inside the Apple North of Beersheba I Guard the Children North of San Francisco Fall in Connecticut Sandals Jerusalem, 1985 Evidence The Course of a Life From The Fist, Too, Was Once the Palm of an Open Hand, and Fingers (1989) What Kind of Man The Greatest Desire Two Disappeared into a House I Know a Man Between Summer Evening in the Jerusalem Mountains At the Beach The Sea and the Shore Autumn Is Near and the Memory of My Parents Yom Kippur Beginning of Autumn in the Hills of Ephraim Ruhama Huleikat- The Third Poem about Dicky The Shore of Ashkelon Fields of Sunflowers First Rain on a Burned Car We Did What We Had To Notes Acknowledgments Index of Titles

"Yehuda Amichai's splendid poems, refined and cast in the desperate foundries of the Middle East, where life and faith are always at stake, exhibit a majestic and Biblical range of the topography of the soul."—Anthony Hecht