War Photographer Flashcards
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.
