nobody becomes excited

NOT BECOMING EXCITED

And we shall not become excited,
we’re told by Amichai.
I feel I almost die
each time no one becomes delighted
by what I tell them, deaf, benighted,
unengaged, untempted
to taste my mind exempted.
By nobody are they indicted,
their silence bullets. I must bite it.
No mediator knows,
verse averse––and prose!––
or is prepared to proselyte it.

Inspired by Yehuda Amichai’s poem “And We Shall Not Get Excited”:

And we shall not get excited. Because a translator
May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on
Words from man to son, from one tongue
To others' lips, un-
Knowingly, like a father who passes on
The features of his dead father's face
To his son, and he himself is like neither of them. Merely a mediator.


We shall remember the things we held in our hands
That slipped out.
What I have in my possession and what I do not have in my possession.

We must not get excited.
Calls and their callers drowned. Or, my beloved
Gave me a few words before she left,
To bring up for her.

And no more shall we tell what we were told
To other tellers. Silence as admission. We must not
Get excited

2/9/10