Natan Alterman, one of Israel's first great poets, wrote abundantly, combining at the same time high literary work with poetic commentary on contemporary life, and with considerably more down-to-earth lyrics to popular songs. All three rôles won him acclaim during his lifetime (a theme on which I might elaborate in the future).
The song I will bring here is called the "Harmonica Song", "Zemer Ha-mafukhit" (זמר המפוחית). Lyrics in Hebrew are available at this link. It is written as a dialogue between a man (who is by connotation a sailor) and his beloved. The man is drunk and tired of himself, "but not of wine - but because of some rag-tag Miriam".
I like Alterman's sharp metaphor (as well as the fact that he put it in the lyrics of a song intended to be popular) —
האהבה היא תוך-תוכו של התפוח
אבל בנישואין לוקחים את הקליפה
Love is the very flesh that makes the apple,
But getting married is all about its skin
So Alterman's hero will marry his Miriam, but he will leave her to sail away, only to think of her at sea. This is very much Alterman's ideal of being in love, found in many of his works - passionate, hopeless, alienated seemingly out of choice, but in essence - due to his hero's inherent inability to stay in one place.
The song (like many of Alterman's) was set to music by Sasha Argov. The original performance was recorded in the 1960s by Edna Goren and Kobi Recht. Mati Kaspi subsequently recorded a version in which he sang all the lyrics - in my opinion it loses the vital dynamic of the dialogue. I would like to conclude with a recent performance by the original performers, with a nice jazzy accompaniment:
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