The Joke

David Avidan

1950

The body of a weary man is primed like an ambulance
Adrenaline charges through his hot blood.
I will go mad if we don’t end this now.
Bizarre how a man so blind with bits of coal
Can strike so exactly at the eyelids of dawn.
Bizarre how a man so deaf hears so well
The steps of the choking wind outside.
So what, we’ve already seen how iron can…
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Creator Bio

David Avidan

1934–1995
Poet, essayist, film writer, and peace activist, David Avidan was born in Ramat-Gan and was raised at Kibbutz Geva. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was an editor and columnist for the newspaper Yediot Aḥaronot. He wrote thirty collections of poetry and the scripts for four films; his Berazim ‘arufe sefatayim (Lipless Faucets; 2001) quickly became a classic of Hebrew poetry. In 1994, Avidan was awarded the Bialik Prize.

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