A man in his life

By Yehuda Amichai

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.