Retrospective Challenge - February!

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The second poet we're revisiting this year is Yehuda Amichai!

If you want a new prompt from him, comment on this post any time in February, and I'll give you a new one.

If you'd rather take a stab at an old prompt, you can take a look at the original sign up post, or the July Challenge prompts from that year.

I hope everyone is having as much fun as I am!

Comments

[smallredboy]

I'd like a prompt, please!

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from A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

[elasticella]

I'd like a prompt, please :)

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from Memorial Day for the War Dead

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
No use to weep inside and to scream outside.
Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

[fadedwings]

I would also like a prompt, please :)

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from Once A Great Love

Once a great love cut my life in two.
The first part goes on twisting
at some other place like a snake cut in two.

The passing years have calmed me
and brought healing to my heart and rest to my eyes.

[bardsley]

Hi,

I would love a new prompt. Thank you.

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from Quick and Bitter

And as we stray further from love
we multiply the words,
words and sentences so long and orderly.
Had we remained together
we could have become a silence.

[bardsley]

Thank you! Would you mind sending me the whole poem? I like to have the full context.

[pf_mod]

Sure thing!

Quick And Bitter by Yehuda Amichai

The end was quick and bitter.
Slow and sweet was the time between us,
slow and sweet were the nights
when my hands did not touch one another in despair but in the love
of your body which came
between them.

And when I entered into you
it seemed then that great happiness
could be measured with precision
of sharp pain. Quick and bitter.

Slow and sweet were the nights.
Now is bitter and grinding as sand—
"Let's be sensible" and similiar curses.

And as we stray further from love
we multiply the words,
words and sentences so long and orderly.
Had we remained together
we could have become a silence.

[bardsley]

Thank you very much. I like the poem. I might never have seen if not for you. <3

[saekhwa]

Prompt please!

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from I wasn't One of Six Million

The years of my life I have broken into hours, and the hours into minutes
and seconds and fractions of seconds. These, only these,
are the stars above me
that cannot be numbered.

[kalloway]

May I have a prompt as well, please?

[pf_mod]

Of course!

from It's Been a While Since They Asked

Among the blossomers, a dead tree stands, dead tree.
A long-standing error, a misunderstanding of yore,
The edge of the Land, where an era begins to be
For somebody else. A bit of stillness there.