The Diameter of the Bomb

The Diameter of the Bomb

I finished reading the report on the Gaza operation today; tomorrow I'll try to write about it. It's a fascinating document; if there was anyone out there who bases their opinion on Israel in facts, it would be a game changer. Since most no-one does that, however, preferring to base their opions on feelings or sentiments, the writing of it was probably mostly a waste.

So instead of blogging today, here's a poem by Yehuda Amichai:

The Diameter of the Bomb

The diameter oft he 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 kilometer,
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 crying of orphans
that raches up to the throne of Gog and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God

from Yehuda Amichai, Poems of Jerusalem

taken from Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations