My name is Paudrigotuma and a number of years ago I was leading a community mediation in the north of Ireland and in the context of the mediation, somebody said,

the most frightening experience I ever had was 20 years ago

when I spoke at a youth festival and people didn't like what I said.

And as I was leaving, some of the young people gathered around my car and they thought it was being mild but they were jostling the car and booing and jeering and as this man said this I thought I think I was one of those young people and I asked

him was this this festival this date and this place and he said yeah and I had

had such a strong sense of connection with those other people.

I was deepening my relationship with religion, deepening my relationship with some friends.

And this guy had said something that people didn't like.

And I joined in... this guy had said something that people didn't like.

And I joined in in this display of jeering

that 20 years later was still something

that somebody else said was the most frightening experience of their life.

It was a shock to me and it changed everything in that community mediation for suddenly

our past to be present in the room where we thought we were talking about what was happening now,

but actually we were talking about much more than that. The Place Where We Are Right by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Stephen Mitchell. From the Place Where we are right, flowers will never grow in the spring.

The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard.

But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow, and a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood. The So this is one of Yehuda Amachai's most famous poems. It's so short and brilliant and precise.

He is probably the most famous Israeli poet of the 20th century. He was born in 1924 and he died in 2000 and he was celebrated the world over.

This particular translation is by Stephen Mitchell.

Yehuda Amochai's poetry is characterized by a kind of a style of language that takes really complex things

and distills them into not simplistic but profoundly simple things, graspable images and metaphors

that can be used for deep reflection on personal life,

...