Dust covered the table

Desert dust covered the table

we hadn't eaten from.

But with my finger I wrote in it the letters of

your name.

In the Middle of This Century - Yehuda Amichai

(translated by Chana Blocha & Stephen Mitchell)

The dream returned so often

it became a part of me,

entered the pores of my skin

with its dust-filled whispers

of a place I'd never seen.

Eventually I became unable

to separate my day from night,

and when the place I'd never been

became more truth than fable

desert dust covered the table.

My parched throat yearned

for seed-red pomegranate,

bitter-sweet sting of orange.

I wanted to live in this exotic rime

of dream land, an oasis

where a heart no longer numb

could rest, remembering

our summer and our spring of love:

there wasn't left a word or crumb

we hadn't eaten from.

Where then did it go and why,

and harder yet, the question when?

When did it slip so silently away?

By stealth it seemed, because

no angry word or deed had

marked its passing, no little shove

had tipped us into emptiness,

the pain of absence.

Only dust remained of love,

but with my fingers I wrote in it the letters of

an alphabet I never knew,

though it seemed familiar to my moving hand.

It wrote me centuries of lovers lost

among a million million grains of sand.

I dream now only oranges and desert's call

and warm myself alone in sun's bright flame.

Your face I will not see again,

its shape obscured by dust and desert storm:

I only know that hand and memory will always frame

your name.