Among all Amichai’s poems, one of the most memorable ones is Wildpeace. Compared to other poems he wrote, Wildpeace, in my opinion is the most powerful one. Throughout this course, I really struggled intepreting the poems and comprehending its meanings quickly compared to other people. Wildpeace was the same, at first, I didn’t really grasp the meanings of this poem, its details, its imagery were quite meaningless, but as I discussed with other people and anlayzed it word by word, I began to think that this poem was extremely well written. Especially the author’s attention to details like imagery, the visual imagery and auditory imagery both served a really important functions to help me feel the sense of irony, for example, in line 10, the author wrote: “A peace, without the big noise of beint swords into ploughshares, withhout words, without the thud of heaavy rubber stamp.” I found this part really interesting and ironic because the author used details to create the scene when governments are negotiating “peace” with “big noise.”

Here’s the full poem

Wildpeace

Yehuda Amichai (1971)

Not the peace of a cease-fire,

not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,

but rather

as in the heart when the excitement is over

and you can talk only about a great weariness.

I know that I know how to kill,

that makes me an adult.

And my son plays with a toy gun that knows

how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.

A peace

without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,

without words, without

the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be

light, floating, like lazy white foam.

A little rest for the wounds—

who speaks of healing?

(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation

to the next, as in a relay race:

the baton never falls.)

 

Let it come

like wildflowers,

suddenly, because the field

must have it: wildpeace.

We also learned a lot of literary devices, although some are too rare to be used on a test, the table was helpful to me overall as it finally helped me find literary devices that I had been searching for.