Yehuda Amichai

Since it is National Poetry Month (and no I probably won't stop mentioning that until May) I thought I would feature a few different types of poetry. First up I thought I would start with free verse since that is what most people think of as poetry nowadays. I like this poem by Amichai because it manages to say so much about war and its devastating effects in so few words.

20

The radius of the bomb was twelve inches
And the radius of its effective force seven yards
Containing four dead and eleven wounded.
And around those, in a wider circle
Of pain and time, are scattered two hospitals
And one graveyard. But the young woman,
Buried in the place she came from,
Over a hundred kilometers from here,
Widens the circle quite a bit,
And the lonely man mourning her death
In the provinces of a Mediterranean land,
Includes the whole world in the circle.
And I shall omit the scream of orphans
That reaches God's throne
And way beyond, and widens the circle
To no end and no God.

~ Yehuda Amichai
(translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav)