Autobiography in the Year 1952

My father built a great worry around me like a dock

Once I left it before I was finished

And he remained with his great, empty worry.

And my mother—like a tree on the shore

Between her arms outstretched for me.

And in '31 my hands were merry and small

And in '41 they learned to use a rifle

And when I loved my first love

My thoughts were like a bunch of colored balloons

And the girl's white hand clutched them all

With a thin string—and then let them fly.

And in '51 the movement of my life

Was like the movement of many slaves rowing a ship,

And the face of my father like the lantern at the end of a parting

train,

And my mother closed all the clouds in her brown closet.

And I climbed up my street,

And the twentieth century was the blood in my veins,

Blood that wanted to go out to many wars,

Through many openings.

It pounds on my head from inside

And moves in angry waves to my heart.

But now, in the spring of '52, I see

More birds have returned than left last winter.

And I return down the slope of the mountain

To my room where the woman's body is heavy

And full of time.

Source: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015)