Wildpeace
Wildpeace
Yehuda Amichai
Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds – who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
Translated by Chana Bloch
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
I have long suspected that this is a mistranslation, and a more accurate translation would be “And my son, who [only] knows how to open and close his eyes and say Mama, plays with a toy gun.”
Thank you for posting this, shamirpower. And thank you, BZ-that makes much more sense.
I’ve googled around and can’t find a copy of this poem in Hebrew (though it must be out there on the web someplace), but I’m quite sure that the translation is accurate and makes perfect sense. The phrasing – “that knows how to open and close its eyes and say Mama” – is the same as that which is used to describe a doll: Baby Cries-a-lot, or whatever. The idea expressed in the poem is that the son plays with a gun in the same way as children in other places might play with dolls.
I’ve also been looking for this in Hebrew. If you find it please post it