In Yehuda Amichai’s poem “The School Where I Studied,” the speaker is reflecting on their childhood experiences in Jerusalem. The author may be implying that the setting is important because of the city’s ongoing political problems. The “landscape” to which the speaker refers alludes to the positive and negative elements of the future society in which the children would live as adults.

The setting of Jerusalem is indicated in the last line, which offers the speaker’s current location “in Jerusalem.” The importance of both the setting and what he and the other schoolchildren “thought ... was only landscape” are revealed by the speaker’s mentions of their “knowledge” and of “good and evil.” The speaker uses metaphors about plants and botany, such as “the flowering of the tree of knowledge,” which has “pests and parasites,” as well as “the botany of good and evil.” These phrases suggest that society has many problems, including moral ones. The speaker’s exact age is not provided, but the phrase “where I studied as a boy” indicates that they are no longer a child.