Melancholetta

Amichai at his best

The Diameter of the Bomb

--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 won’t 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.


Amichai at his best! The trivial start with the trite statistic creates a deliberate stir when all of a sudden Amichai transitions into the Metaphor mode. Where he transcends himself and all the readers expectations is in the final few lines where the images of the crying orphans rend the reader's heart, setting things up classically for the final line. Yehuda Amichai is a treasure trove half buried to the world.

posted by Dileepan @ 10:30 PM