The Diameter of the Bomb
The Diameter of the Bomb - meaning Summary
Small Blast, Widening Grief
The poem contrasts the literal, measurable diameter of a bomb with the far larger, expanding circles of human loss it creates. Immediate casualties occupy a small physical radius, but relationships, funerals, distant mourners and the orphaned multiply suffering across time and geography. Private grief extends the circle to encompass the world, and collective bereavement challenges divine shelter, suggesting loss is immeasurable and moral effects outlast any technical calculation of destruction.
Read Complete AnalysesThe 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.
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