Two Quatrains, Yehuda Amichai

I.
Once I escaped, but I do not remember why or from which god.
I shall therefore travel through my life like Jonah in his dark fish.
We’ve settled it between us, I am the fish, we’re both in the world’s bowels.
I shall not come out, he will not digest me.

II.
The last rains came on a warm night. In the morning my disaster blossomed.
The race is over. Who is first, who is second?
After our death, we could play: I shall be you, you — me.
In the dead moon, in the dead moon, in the returning ancient time, in my window tree.

~Yehuda Amichai
(translated by Assia Gutmann)