A Precise Woman

Portrait of Yehuda Amichai
Yehuda Amichai 1924–2000

A precise woman with a short haircut brings order to my thoughts and my dresser drawers, moves feelings around like furniture into a new arrangement. A woman whose body is cinched at the waist and firmly divided into upper and lower, with weather-forecast eyes of shatterproof glass. Even her cries of passion follow a certain order, one after the other: tame dove, then wild dove, then peacock, wounded peacock, peacock, peacock, the wild dove, tame dove, dove dove thrush, thrush, thrush.

A precise woman: on the bedroom carpet her shoes always point away from the bed. (My own shoes point toward it.)

Keep reading

Discover more of Yehuda Amichai’s poetry.

Explore all poems

Readers

Reader discussion

Your turn

Shown with your comment.

Never published. Only so we can reach you.

Comments are read before they appear. See our terms.