poetry wednesday : the diameter of the bomb.

The Diameter of the Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective
range – about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometres away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.

-Yehuda Amichai (trans. from Hebrew by Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes)

I am considering the reverberations of my single actions (and inactions). The whole world is included in the circle.