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These translations from the Hebrew poetry of Yehuda Amichai come with a brief introduction by Ted Hughes who says, “It’s hard to imagine that many of Yehuda’s poems can be better in Hebrew than they are in English.” Certainly these translations by various hands, including that of Hughes himself, possess a sameness of movement, diction and imagery that makes it virtually impossible to distinguish one translator from another. However no one would mistake these poems for original English verse, for their rhythms, the sources of their imagery and their topography are all located in Jewish history and cultural traditions from biblical times to the present. Although I have no knowledge of the Hebrew language and its literature, apart from a nodding-off acquaintance with the Old Testament, I’m pretty sure that we will find in many of these poems a kind of classical Hebrew prosody as heard in the psalms of David. Take these typical lines, for instance, from ‘In The Middle of this Century’:

I spoke in praise of your mortal hips,
You spoke in praise of my passing face,
I stroked your hair in the direction of your
                                                         journey,
I touched your flesh, prophet of your end,
I touched your hand which has never slept,
I touched your mouth which may yet sing.

Although these poems are all firmly rooted in the soil or sand of their author’s beloved country their concerns are the universal ones of love and war, time and mortality. If this sounds rather over-earnest I must emphasize the fact that Amichai is often witty in a style that is attractively indigenous. No goyisch poet, I suspect, could have written the following lines from Eyes:

My eldest son’s eyes are like black figs
For he was born at the end of the summer.

And my youngest son’s eyes are clear
Like orange slices, for he was born in their
                                                            season.

And the eyes of my little daughter are round
Like the first grapes.

And all are sweet in my worry.

And the eyes of the Lord roam the earth
And my eyes are always looking round my
                                                             house

God’s in the eye business and the fruit
                                                          business
I’m in the worry business.

On the evidence of this handsomely produced and generous Selected Poems Amichai is a poet of originality and distinction.