The Diameter of the Bomb

[WilliamPitt]

The Diameter of the Bomb

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 won’t even mention the howl of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

--Yehuda Amichai

[BrotherIvan]

1. Amazing

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. How beautiful and heartbreaking that is, my dear Will...

Thank you...

[Demo_Chris]

3. Whoa! Amazing.

[Generic Other]

4. I looked up the author

and read this about him:

Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and German. According to literary scholar Nili Scharf Gold, a childhood trauma in Germany had an impact on his later poetry: he had an argument with a childhood friend of his, Ruth Hanover, that caused her to bicycle home angrily; she fell and as a result had to get her leg amputated. Several years later, she was unable to join the rest of her family, who fled the Nazi takeover, due to her missing leg, and ended up being killed in the Holocaust.

There is an irony and connectedness in this poem, this story and of course, today's events have that same feel. The ripples.

[HappyMe]

5. Lovely and heartbreaking.

[WillyT]

6. WOW !!! - K & R !!!

[nolabear]

7. Thank you. Stunning and haunting.

[Hekate]

8. I got chills all over, reading that

[WilliamPitt]

9. Up

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. You need a few of these tonight

a tight one very much so,

And many, many more

[WilliamPitt]

11. One last

up.