Looking at Photographs

(Paul Strand)

Coal smoke smudges the sky,
makes everything dingy.

Shadows fill your cup each morning,
for you to drink.

*

Driftwood
tangled like bodies
in a mass grave.

*

Man facing the tide.
Waves in successive rows,
closing in.

*

Ruin as after a violent storm,
as if the heavy, metallic clouds
stamped down hard
and demolished the plain.

A woman bends to see
if a corpse is hers.
Another pleads with her dead son:
Why did you fight?

*


Rebecca, scarred and hardened.
The men in the room eyeing her…

*

Then the sun makes everything
brilliant. The birds are golden.

*

She shines, flickers
in the clouds at night,
the wind blowing her
away from you.

.