I wrote this after watching the 2023 movie “Lee”, which covers key parts of the life of Lee Miller, photojournalist, model, CSA survivor, and war correspondent - and is particularly evocative of the experiences she underwent in World War II that left her - very understandably - further (and severely) traumatised (see also here and here). Follow the links if you want to know more (I have to be wary of Blogger’s rules), but this poem was my response to watching the movie.
In modern war, the shell and bomb
destroy the most
- and, in buildings, do not
leave neatly disassembled piles
of what had been, maybe lovingly,
maybe skilfully, maybe cheaply,
wrought into one conjoint creation ...
No, shell and bomb leave
a tangled scatter of pulverised components
each break and smash a release of pulver
till shocked cloud tries to hide
some of what has been done.
But not to bodies of man nor other beings ...
it is not dust
that pulverised flesh
contributes to the air
(and land, and water).
And, in modern war,
that's not all that's in the air;
civilians hide and hope,
bullets fly, soldiers dodge,
and washing is, of necessity, set aside
adding living human smells
- and taint of wounds,
to all that colours that air.
And yet those smells
- stenches of death,
reminders of hurt or unwashed life,
all pale before what wafts
from train and camp
- not from pulverised, once living flesh,
but twin stenches:
One of cruelty devised, planned,
organised - people herded and counted,
cruelty sustained ...
- cruelnesses both known and new,
cruelty of size and severities
and length and breadth and depth
that, beyond its victims, survivors, and perpetrators,
robs the witness of body's breath
and heart's humanity and soul's hope ...
- cruelty that stains the pores of witness's soul ...
a besmirching totality of cruelty not known nor conceived
- till then ...
And the other stench ...
the evil that conceived it ...
those two foulnesses
pollute those airs.
Copyright © Kayleen White, Wiradjuri and Widjabul-Wiabol woman of the Lost Generations, 2025 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication). I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit and due financial recompense, of course :)
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