In the Valley of the Shadow of Death
The first iconic photograph of war
was Roger Fenton’s moonscape from Crimea.
We see a path and plain and little more;
no dead nor signs of death, or life, appear.
We know, as shocked Victorians could not:
the barren, shell-shorn place resembles Mars,
but for a galaxy of large round shot
that yawns to the horizon, thick as stars.
For all the emptiness his camera showed,
for years we've argued and researched the claim
some cannonballs were set out on the road,
as if that made the wasteland seem less tame.
At last, we've proved they were. Could one contrive
a better metaphor? The conscience palls
at what we’ve learned since 1855
of war and misplaced focus, which is . . . Balls.
Frank
Linear Mode
