I would hate to be called, like some people do,
some people say a "poet of war," or a "poet of love,"
a "poet of Jerusalem."
And so on, and so on.
And I think it's a very nasty thing that sometimes critics
do to us when they label us.
And then if you are a "poet of love,"
you are not allowed to write a poem about nature,
about anything else, because it upsets the whole system
of critics, and it's really--
But because I have been living in Jerusalem for so long
and I grew up there, and my children were born there,
so it became a natural place.
And I really don't think that only Jerusalem can
be a good place to write poetry, which is silly, because I think
any place in the world where people grow up
and have a full life there can be as valuable to them
as Jerusalem to me, or any other place.
It's some kind of romantic thing in lives
that people think that people living
in Rome or Jerusalem or some other very historical and much
history-ridden places, that it must
be marvelous to live there because from my balcony
you can see the old city.
It's a very old house.
It's very beautiful there, but it never
comes to my mind to think about it.
It's the old city, that's David's Citadel,
and that's the Mount of Zion, and so on and so on.
It's just there, like you see the mountains
and, OK, you don't, and I think it's a very good thing
because otherwise it would be terrible to live in a place
where you have constantly to be aware.
And sometimes tourists make you aware
that you live there, that this is the place where
King David and Jesus and the prophet Tisha
Yahweh and [INAUDIBLE] walked.
And to us, it's a place of life, and the greatness of Jerusalem
is that it has been a city where life has
been going on all these times.
War and peace, and people have been living there,
and I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
If your laundry hangs up across the streets of Jerusalem,
and if you have television masts up there,
I think it's a sign that people live there,
and it's not a museum and nothing there is precious,
because every living person is worth all
the stones in the world.
And I think it should be one big principle in our lives.
But of course I am sometimes aware like you
are aware of things that have happened here
in the past, in the far past, in the near past,
and I would like the first poem of Jerusalem.
I would like, it's a poem about the wedding
of a very good friend who also happened
to translate one of my books.
He's an American poet who belonged to the so-called New
York School of poets and he came to Israel about 20 years ago
and since then has even published two books of Hebrew
poetry which is very original.
And so when he married about 12 or 15 years ago,
I just wanted to write them a poem.
It's something which modern poets don't do anymore.
In the time of the Renaissance they
used very often to write poems for weddings or for birthdays
and so on, and I think it's a very nice thing.
Anyhow in this week of his wedding
I just was, I was also looking for to give them a present.
And so this poem didn't come to save myself a present.
[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]
So it's but I just was looking around
and all things that came my way I gathered together
like wildflowers.
Everything, I felt so happy with it too.
Schimmel is his name and Varda is her name.
We were very good friends.
I mean I was so happy that they got wed, that we,
that everything that came my way I
put it into this bouquet, which became a kind of--
So there are certain things here,
which is, maybe you don't know.
Only the name of the place which is called Motza.
It's a little village right outside Jerusalem,
which at that time had a new highway running past.
And because everything is very rocky,
so they had to blast out with dynamite for this new road.
And there are some other places like the Russian compound,
which is a place in Jerusalem but you don't need it,
and the Russian compound now houses police headquarters
and also it's a local jail where all kinds of petty thieves
and prostitutes spend one or two nights.
"Jerusalem in the Week of the Marriage of Schimmel."
"I saw a foreign beatnik shoulder his red guitar
like a rifle.
I saw a beggar put out a jingling hand at the entrance
to the public pissoir across from buttoning men.
And in the Russian compound, I heard at night
fresh whores who sang and danced in jail, Esty, Esty, Esty,
take me.
Jerusalem sung in audio-visual love.
Jerusalem still drunk, froth of tourists on her lips.
I take her temperature.
38 degrees," which is Celsius, centigrade.
"38 degrees in the shade of her armpits.
One hundred degrees of joy in the mouth of the gold ring.
But Motza, Schimmel is preparing Motza for his marriage.
From the East, seven red bulldozers cut the mountain
like a great wedding cake.
Ten yellow cement mixers, 30 workers
with flags and shirts of phosphorescent orange.
21 explosions in the afternoon.
Mazel tov."
[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]
"Schimmel and Varda are already descending slowly
in the parachute of the white synagogue.
Now they are standing silent, wrapped in the cellophane paper
of God's mercy.
Love in one clean room, like a dream of years of good living
compressed in one minute of sleep.
Schimmel and Varda, two tranquilizer pills
melting slowly in the mouth of the excited and crumbling
world."