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Yehuda Amichai
What Kind of a Person
"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say
to me.
I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul,
Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system
Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century,
But with an old body from ancient times
And with a God even older than my body.
I'm a person for the surface of the earth.
Low places, caves and wells
Frighten me. Mountain peaks
And tall buildings scare me.
I'm not like an inserted fork,
Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.
I'm not flat and sly
Like a spatula creeping up from below.
At most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle
Mashing good and bad together
For a little taste
And a little fragrance.
Arrows do not direct me. I conduct
My business carefully and quietly
Like a long will that began to be written
The moment I was born.
Now I stand at the side of the street
Weary, leaning on a parking meter.
I can stand here for nothing, free.
I'm not a car, I'm a person,
A man-god, a god-man
Whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.
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Mey K.
Is this truly me?
"Is this truly you?", people ask me
When they're looking at each album. No, it's not.
I'm a fallen elder with a bad, crap-filled brain locked on self-destruction,
Dead senses and a fucked-up, apathetic approach,
But stuffed in a tall, buff figure in modern times,
Part of a society phase that's almost newer than me.
I'm more of a living-room man.
I can dread the outside world,
Yet get anxious when closed in my
Own damp room for too long.
I'm nothing like a loud dog,
A warm toaster or a black desk.
Ah, I'm certainly not an on-line connection,
Fast, netted and changing,
But more of a television channel,
Generating mindless entertainment,
Always fake
And always self-aware.
Few pointers are called for
When I think and when I try and anagram a long poem;
I'm a square-dance, which peglegged steps
Were drafted at birth.
My left hand rests on the empty mouse-pad.
It oughtn't to move the cursor by itself.
That's not its job.
I'm a man, not a mouse,
A deity-born, a born deity
That won't last much longer... Amen for that.
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