Monday, July 2, 2012

Prayer is in the Air

Below is a poem by the great Jerusalem poet Yehuda Amichai.  The poem leaves me asking the following questions:

  1. What does it feel like to live in a place saturated with prayer?
  2. How does one daven often without making it an industry?
  3. One knows when that 'moment' arrives, but how does one regulate it to happen in the future on a consistent basis? 
Answers and more questions welcome.

___________________________________
The air over Jerusalem is saturated
with prayer and dreams
like the air over industrial cities.
It’s hard to breath.
And from time to time a new shipment of history arrives
and the houses and towers are its packing materials.
Later these are discarded and piled up in dumps.
And sometimes candles arrive instead of people
and then it’s quiet.
and sometimes people come instead of candles
and then there’s noise.
And in enclosed gardens heavy with jasmine
foreign consulates,
like wicked brides that have been rejected,
lie in wait for their moment.
Yehuda Amichai

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