A Touch of Grace
Poems by Yehuda Amichai
Photographs by Didier Ben Loulou
Museum of the Seam
For Dialogue, Understanding and Coexistence
Jerusalem is built on vaulted foundations / Of a held-back
shout. Without a reason / For the shout, the foundation would give, the city would totter;
/ If the shout is shouted, Jerusalem would explode skyward.
A Touch of Grace
Poems by Yehuda Amichai and photographs by Didier Ben Loulou, jointly and separately, inaugurate a series of exhibition at the Museum on the Seam's Basement Gallery.The Gallery aims to promote an artistic dialogue on sociopolitical issues, being part of a museum that explores the various ways for instituting a dialogue between different groups and adversaries in the Israeli society. The affiliation of poetry with direct-photography, of Amichai moving lines with Didier Ben Loulou's uncompromising eye, reflects both an abstract and a figurative reality. A keen discernment and blurry boundaries meet for a moment and then depart. Figure and landscape so near and yet so distant. A local biography, an authentic one, as well as a prophetic declaration which bears an apocalyptic vision and a touch of grace. It is an affront on the apparent day-to-day reality that carries on unheedingly under our very nose yet light years away. The engraved line and the lime carvings on the rock make the time traces of this place - poetic, unyielding, brimming with sensitivity, carrying an eternal puissance.
Raphie Etgar, Museum Curator
Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
The towel of a man is my enemy,
To wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
A kite.
At the other end of the sting,
A child
I can’t see
Because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
They have put up many flags.
To make us think that they’re happy.
To make them think that we’re happy.
At times Jerusalem is a city of knives,
And even the hopes for peace are sharp enough to slice into
The harsh reality and they become dulled or broken.
The church bells try so hard to ring out calm, round tones,
But they become heavy, like a pestle pounding on a mortar,
Heavy, muffled, downtrodding voices. And the cantor
And the muezzin try to sing sweetly
But in the end the sharp wail bursts forth:
O Lord, God of us all, The Lord is One
One, one, one, one.*
(*also means “sharp” in Hebrew.)
Jerusalem’s Suicide Attempts
The tears here do not soften
The eyes. They only hone
And polish the hard face, like a rock.
Jerusalem’s suicide attempts,
She tried again on the Ninth of Av,
She tried with slow decay of white dust
In the wind. She’ll never succeed,
But she’ll try again and again.
I’ll Be Magnified and Sanctified
Between things falling and those hastily being raised
Is there place for one lingers, one who remains?
Between things dying and those living
Is there place for one living quietly in his house,
One who stays where he is, one who sees, one who is seen?
I’m a judge, alone in judgement on the bench,
There is no accuser, no accused
Only witnesses and testimony.
In my childhood I knew about illness in people,
I understood sick animals,
When I grew up I learned that trees too
Can be ill and suffer in silence.
I’ll live long enough to understand a sick stone,
A suffering rock, a boulder in pain.
The universe will come full circle in me,
The inanimate speaks softly, the living stays silent.
This is my place
And in this way I’ll be magnified
And sanctified.
