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Host Marcela Sulak reads a long poem by Yehezkel Kedmi, called “My People, Knowledge, and Me,” translated by Ammiel Alcalay. Kedmi was born in Jerusalem and spent much of his youth and adult life on the streets. He is an autodidact, expanding his range of interests while working as a night watchman at Hebrew University.

Here is an excerpt from the poem:

“Over and above this the knowledge and over and above this my people, and
the chasm is unbreachable. In this I am.
Another creature did I see and I wept, this was in my solitude—
there I saw the creature that is man alone.
The way a person is abandoned with no one to embrace him, the way a person is abandoned and no one asks after his well-being.
There is no one to see the wounded soul but for the oppressed who also see the wounded soul.
Whoever has seen a solitary man in his lamenting and not wept with him,
has never seen a solitary man in his lament.
The solitary man has within him the sorrow of a child, the solitary man, he truly is a man.
and I saw another creature—that was the man leaving, by far the cruelest of
creatures.”

Text:
Yehezkel Kedmi, “My People, Knowledge, and Me,” translated by Ammiel Alcalay in Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay. City Lights Books, 1996.