The Poetry Corner

The Diameter Of The Bomb

By Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, with four dead and eleven wounded. And around these, in a larger circle of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered and one graveyard. But the young woman who was buried in the city she came from, at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, enlarges the circle considerably, and the solitary man mourning her death at the distant shores of a country far across the sea includes the entire world in the circle. And I wont even mention the crying of orphans that reaches up to the throne of God and beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.