A man gone out of Egypt

And what is my life span? I’m like a man gone out of Egypt:

the Red Sea parts, I cross on dry land,

two walls of water, on my right hand and on my left.

Pharaoh’s army and his horsemen behind me. Before me the desert,

perhaps the Promised Land, too. That is my life span.

Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is open

in the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closed

within us. And when we die, everything is open again.

Open closed open. That’s all we are.

I came to the Promised Land by sea.

No, I was not in that number, though I still have the fire and the smoke

within me, pillars of fire and pillars of smoke that guide me

by night and by day. I still have inside me the mad search

for emergency exits, for soft places, for the nakedness

of the land, for the escape into weakness and hope,

I still have within me the lust to search for living water

with quiet talk to the rock or with frenzied blows.

-Yehuda Amichai