War Photographer
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with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
The personification of “All flesh is grass” belongs to the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, wherein the latter contrasts the shortness of human life with eternal religious truths.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands which did not tremble then
though seem to now. 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.
Something is happening. 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
for Sunday's supplement. The reader's eyeballs prick
with tears between bath and pre-lunch beers.
From aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns a living and they do not care.
In his darkroom he is finally alone
"darkroom" metaphorically describes the depression the photographer has suffered from taking the photos of war.
"spools of suffering set" sibillance to create a calm, negative mood.
"set out in ordered rows" refer to dead soldiers being buried.
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Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
The reference to the areas just shows where the photographer
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This is a simile that compares the priest and the photographer.
This refers to the photographer getting ready to show his photographs to the world.
"He has a job to do. Solution" contains Caesura which depicts his transition from grim war to his home, "Rural England." "Job to do" also implies to us that he treats this photograph as his job when he takes the pictures.
This shows that when he is not working, when he reflects on these images, he begins to feel emotional and upset since he is not working.
The poet uses "Solutions" to refer to political ways to sort out problems
The use of "feet of running children", simply suggests to us the horrific conflicts of warfare. The way the poet creates a metaphor of comparing English land to being not explosive.
The poet uses caesura and short lines to create suspense.
"Something is happening"
This use of "Something is happening" could also imply to the photographer is starting to become emotional.
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The poet is suggesting that the images are beginning to form and that photographer was seeing the pain of the photo forming
This emotive language suggests how he is now seeing the soldiers die instead of than when he was taking their photographs.
This is also referring to the soldiers that have died in this photograph to having an incomplete life.
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The man obviously has a right to privacy, but as the photographer doesn’t speak the native language of this country, he is unable to ask his grief-stricken wife’s permission to take the photos or, possibly, the wife is too much in despair to notice the photographer, so he has to take the photo without asking her.
Alternatively, ‘without words’ need not be literal but could signify that the photographer was too shocked and horrified to find words to show what he wanted to say, in any language.
The blood penetrates the ‘foreign dust’. The blood will dry and the dust blow away. However, the memories of the blood will penetrate the conscious and sub-conscious mind of the photographer. What he sees and experiences will ‘stain’ him; be with him till the end of his life.
Sibilance is used in this line to emphasise how harsh this world is
This is also a biblical reference to how all bodies will return to the dust in the end.
Referring to all the images he has taken to contain a lot of sorrow.
"hundred" is hyperbolised to demonstrate the depressing reality of war and conflict.
"Sunday's supplement" suggests to us that the editors will only ever pick photos of war for minor papers, to show that the westernised society not caring about the war that is occurring in the east. It may also suggest that since the Western society only shows the bad things that has happened to them not the bad things that has happened to the people in the East. Thus showing propaganda of the people of the East being bad.
This is implying to us that warfare affects the readers, but not enough to end the conflict.
Doing this suggests to us that the people being taken there do not care about the pain the people that live in the conditions of war.
It also suggests to us that the work he does may not affect the readers that much.
This implies to us that if his photos do not do anything, it is practically useless for the photographer to do the job.