Try to remember Some Details
by Yehudah 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.