A naked child is running <br />along the path toward us, <br />her arms stretched out, <br />her mouth open, <br />the world turned to trash <br />behind her. <br /> <br />She is running from the smoke <br />and the soldiers, from the bodies <br />of her mother and little sister <br />thrown down into a ditch, <br />from the blown-up bamboo hut <br />from the melted pots and pans. <br />And she is also running from the gods <br />who have changed the sky to fire <br />and puddled the earth with skin and blood. <br />She is running--my god--to us, <br />10,000 miles away, <br />reading the caption <br />beneath her picture <br />in a weekly magazine. <br />All over the country <br />we're feeling sorry for her <br />and being appalled at the war <br />being fought in the other world. <br />She keeps on running, you know, <br />after the shutter of the camera <br />clicks. She's running to us. <br />For how can she know, <br />her feet beating a path <br />on another continent? <br />How can she know <br />what we really are? <br />From the distance, we look <br />so terribly human.<br /><br />Kate Daniels<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/war-photograph/
