In Yehuda Amichai’s The Diameter of the Bomb, the author uses imagery to bear witness to tragedy or more difficult aspects of human life. When the author says that “[t]he diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded[,]” it shows how lethal the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is (Yehuda Amichai). The author’s description allows the reader to envision the unfortunate situation in their mind. We read about four innocent Israeli deaths. Amichai’s poem is extremely impactful because situations similar to the one in the poem occur on a regular basis.
I agree with you that Amichai is trying to show the difficult aspects of human life such as the effect of war and how far it reaches. The tone of the poem is one that is sorrowful as he describes the many deaths that occurred. Amichai wants to express that humans are all interconnected and that even the seemingly small incidents in one area can affect others. For instance, the bomb explosion in one place ended up affecting many others around the world.