War Photographer Flashcards
(10 cards)
In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
He has a job to do.
Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost.
He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.
A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.
