Tourists

By Yehuda Amichai

Satirical
Visits of condolence is all we get from them. They squat at the Holocaust Memorial, They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall And they laugh behind heavy curtains In their hotels. They have their pictures taken Together with our famous dead At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb And on Ammunition Hill. They weep over our sweet boys And lust after our tough girls And hang up their underwear To dry quickly In cool, blue bathrooms.

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Poem Details

Language: English
Keywords: Public Domain
Source: Public Domain Collection
Rights/Permissions: Public Domain
Analysis & Notes:
This poem critiques the performative, often hypocritical nature of tourism in Israel, particularly the way visitors engage with sites of historical trauma. Structured as a single, unbroken stanza of 14 lines, it mimics the form of a sonnet but subverts its traditional lyrical or romantic conventions. The iambic rhythm and lack of end rhymes lend a prosaic, conversational tone, reinforcing the poem’s accusatory stance. The speaker’s voice is detached yet biting, cataloging the tourists’ superficial interactions with sacred spaces squatting, posing, weeping while juxtaposing their solemnity with their private, unguarded moments (laughing, lusting, hanging underwear). The poem’s turn occurs midway, shifting from public displays of reverence to intimate, almost grotesque behaviors, exposing the tourists’ insincerity. The final lines, with their clinical imagery of cool, blue bathrooms, underscore the sterility of their engagement, reducing the weight of history to a fleeting, sanitized experience. The poem’s power lies in its unflinching indictment of tourism as a hollow spectacle.

Understanding Satirical Poetry

Satirical poems use wit, irony, exaggeration, and ridicule to expose folly—personal, social, or political. The aim isn’t just laughter: it’s critique that nudges readers toward insight or change.

Common characteristics of satirical poetry:

  • Targeted Critique: Focuses on specific behaviors, institutions, or ideas—often timely, sometimes timeless.
  • Tools of Irony: Uses sarcasm, parody, understatement, and hyperbole to sharpen the point.
  • Voice & Persona: Speakers may be unreliable or exaggerated to reveal contradictions and hypocrisy.
  • Form Flexibility: Appears in couplets, tercets, quatrains, blank verse, or free verse—music serves the mockery.
  • Moral Pressure: Beneath the humor lies ethical pressure—satire seeks reform, not merely amusement.
  • Public & Personal: Can lampoon public figures and trends or needle private vanities and everyday pretenses.

The best satire balances bite with craft: memorable lines that entertain while revealing the gap between how things are and how they ought to be.