War Photographer

The reassurance of the frame is flexible
- you can think that just outside it
people eat, sleep, love normally
while I seek out the tragic, the absurd,
to make a subject.
Or if the picture's such as lifts the heart
the firmness of the edges can convince you
this is how things are

- as when at ascot once
I took a pair of peach, sun-gilded girls
rolling, silk crumpled, on the grass
in champagne giggles

-as last week, when I followed a small girl
staggering down some devastated street,
hip thrust out under a baby's weight.
she saw me seeing her; my finger pressed.

At the corner, the first bomb of the morning
shattered the stones .
Instinct prevailing, she dropped her burden
and, mouth too small for her dark scream,
began to run...

The picture showed the little mother
the almost-smile. Their caption read
'Even in hell the human spirit
triumphs over all.'
But hell' like heaven, is untidy,
its boundaries
arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall.