At the scene
The talking torsos are always there,
suitably sombre, often wearing
flak-jackets.
Their faces are haggard,
their eyes dark-pouched, brows creased
with the chevrons and lambda-marks
of deep concern, a look re-composed
in the satellite bounce between question
and response.
Their weary voices tell us
what we already know, about humanity,
about nature, as they track the trajectories
of growling missiles, or stand before
the litter of discarded bodies, the piles
of rubble garnished with the baggage of lives,
as they survey all the silts of human misery.
Compères of catastrophe, why are your hands
not bloodied by hours of scrabbling concrete?
Why do you not keen above a riddled corpse?
Where are you among the beds of big-eyed
disease and fear?
They look back, reply
Why aren’t yours? Why don’t you?
Where are you, voyeur?
Page(s) 44
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