The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

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 kilometers 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 the orphans

that reaches to the seat of God

and from there onward, making

the circle without end and without God.

— Yehuda Amichai, ‘Time’ published by Oxford University Press