Poem for 5/5/22 - Israel Independence Day - An Arab Shepherd is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion by Yehuda Amichai

An Arab Shepherd is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion

Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
and on the opposite mountain I am searching
for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
both in their temporary failure.
Our voices meet
above the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
Neither of us wants
the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels
of the terrible Had Gadya machine.

Afterward we found them among the bushes
and our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying.

Searching for a goat or a son
has always been the beginning
of a new religion in these mountains.