My mother baked the whole world for me
In little sweet cakes.
My love filled my window
With raisins of stars.
I enclose longings within me like air
Pockets in a loaf of bread.
Outside I am smooth and quiet and brown.
The world loves me.
But my hair is sad like the reeds in a drying marsh –
All birds of rare and beautiful plumage
Fly from me.
Notes on this poem
Reproduced by permission of Hana Amichai.