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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Try To Remember Some Details by Yehuda Amichai

Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing 
of the one you love 
so that on the day of loss you'll be able to say: last seen 
wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat. 
Try to remember some details. For they have no face 
and their soul is hidden and their crying 
is the same as their laughter, 
and their silence and their shouting rise to one height 
and their body temperature is between 98 and 104 degrees 
and they have no life outside this narrow space 
and they have no graven image, no likeness, no memory 
and they have paper cups on the day of their rejoicing 
and paper cups that are used once only. 

Try to remember some details. For the world 
is filled with people who were torn from their sleep 
with no one to mend the tear, 
and unlike wild beasts they live 
each in his lonely hiding place and they die 
together on battlefields 
and in hospitals. 
And the earth will swallow all of them, 
good and evil together, like the followers of Korah, 
all of them in thir rebellion against death, 
their mouths open till the last moment, 
praising and cursing in a single 
howl. Try, try 
to remember some details.

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