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War Photograph

- Kate Daniels



A naked child is running

along the path toward us,

her arms stretched out,

her mouth open,

the world turned to trash

behind her.



She is running from the smoke

and the soldiers, from the bodies

of her mother and little sister

thrown down into a ditch,

from the blown-up bamboo hut

from the melted pots and pans.

And she is also running from the gods

who have changed the sky to fire

and puddled the earth with skin and blood.

She is running--my god--to us,

10,000 miles away,

reading the caption

beneath her picture

in a weekly magazine.

All over the country

we're feeling sorry for her

and being appalled at the war

being fought in the other world.

She keeps on running, you know,

after the shutter of the camera

clicks. She's running to us.

For how can she know,

her feet beating a path

on another continent?

How can she know

what we really are?

From the distance, we look

so terribly human.