THERE is a short poem by Yehuda Amichai, an Israeli poet who was born in Würzburg, Germany, and died in Jerusalem at the age of 76:

From the place where we are right

flowers will never grow

in the spring.

In the place where we are right—where we are sure we are not wrong—something has changed. The pliable clay became hard, the loose mud became stiff. On it we kept trampling, stamping, marching, galloping. The patch of land se