The Poetry Corner

What Kind Of A Person

By Yehuda Amichai

"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. s 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.