Amichai’s Top 50/47 ‘At Telchi Ba’Sadeh ‘ You Will Walk in the Field. את תלכי בשדה
Lea Goldberg was the poet I fell in love with at age 17 like many Israelis do and when I went to Yeshiva that year I hung a portrait of her on the wall and was told by some rabbi to take it down because it wasn’t modest. But I recalled her poems to memory and some of them, like this, come easily to me on days when most needed, or lines just pop up, like the one from this one — permitted, permitted to love.
One of the first Shabbats away from home, walking in a field of yellow daisies, singing to myself, walking free. These words. A defining moment.
Moments like this, these memories are when I miss Hebrew the most and miss it in my intimate relationships. O to read Goldberg in bed with my love. So may it be. Permitted, permitted to love.
Chava Alberstein has the famous version but I prefer Boaz Sharabi’s version with a different composition and his deep deep voice, deep in head and heart:.
Permitted, permitted to love.
“Will there yet come days of forgiveness and grace,
When you walk in the field as the innocent wayfarer does?
And the soles of your feet caress the clover leaves
Though stubble will sting you, sweet will be their touch.
Or rain will overtake you, its thronging drops tapping
On your shoulder, your chest, your throat, your gentle head bowed.
And you will walk in the wet field, the quiet in you expanding
Like light in the hem of a cloud.
And you will breathe the odor of the furrow, breathing and quiet,
And you will see mirrored in the gold puddle the sun above,
And simple will be these things, and life, permission to touch,
Permitted, permitted to love.
Slowly you will walk in the field. Alone. Not scorched by flames
Of conflagrations on roads that bristled with horror and blood. Again
You will be peaceful in heart, humble and bending
Like one of the grasses, like one of the people.״
Lea Goldberg (1911-1970)Translation: Mintz 1966
Amichai’s Top 50: Soundtrack of my life. 4/20-6-8 2019/Passover-Shavuot 5779
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