Analysis of A Man In His Life

Yehuda Amichai 1924 (Würzburg) – 2000 (Israel)



A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget.


Scheme XXXAX XAXXBXX XAB
Poetic Form
Metre 011011011 111110 1101100111 0101100101 11011 0111101110110 11011011 101111101101 111010101 0110010010001 1010011101011100 110111 011011 111011111 101110111111101101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 612
Words 125
Sentences 7
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 5, 7, 3
Lines Amount 15
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 160
Words per stanza (avg) 41
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 29, 2023

38 sec read
70

Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai (‎3 May 1924 – 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. more…

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