"A Man In His Life" by Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai

A Man In His Life

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

Zycie mezczyzny

Nie na wszystko ma czas mezczyzna
w swoim zyciu.
Nie dla niego czas na wszystko. Eklezjasta
mylil sie.
Mezczyzna musi jednoczesnie kochac i nienawidzic,
ronic lzy ze smiechu i smutku
kamienie rzucac i gromadzic,
kochac w czasie wojny i walczyc w milosci.
Nienawidzic i przebaczac, pamietac i zapominac,
Porzadkowac i burzyc, jesc i trawic
wszystko to na co
historia patrzebuje wielu lat.
Mezczyzna nie ma czasu.
Kiedy traci to szuka, znajdujac
zapomina, kiedy zapomina to kocha, kochajac
zaczyna zapominac.
Dusza jego jest zaprawiona,
pelna doswiadczenia.
Jedynie cialo jego na zawsze
niedoswiadczone. Powstajac i upadajac
miota sie, niczego nie rozumie
pijane i slepe w swych zadzach
i bolach.

Umrze jak umieraja figi na jesien
zasuszone, dojrzale i slodkie,
opadle liscie usychaja pod drzewem,
gole galezie wskazuja miejsce,
gdzie na wszystko jest czas.