War Photo
to the rock band U2

 

The news is but an announcer's tone to promote hysteria in
            broadcasting.
The real news is in your head, the movie that's building with
            automatic casting.
You close your eyes, try to turn off this tragic house's tv of
            a brain inside,
Make the reality signs but MTV reality, fun without calamity.

Dogshite. Wake up. We have barely years to go before we can
            already bear it.
Let's make haste, be together, as though we'll never forget
            all of it:

"Broken bottles under children's feet, bodies strewn across
            a dead-end street,"
Whoever it was invented New Journalism never invented it
            at all.
Folk music has always sung of it, the reportage in the wail
            of a chord's fall.

Catshit. Wake up. I won't be sucked in by this cry for battle,
My fear glues me to a wall of flowers, with father, mother,
            brothers, sisters,
This picture of a Sunday with a river of blood flooding a
            bridge of silence.

Yeah, this many already lost e'en before a war is begun, yet
This many too tying their boots . . . Who wins by a massacre,
The one who runs with the loot? I'd rather believe rewards
Come to some in the form of a salute. . . . And so we wrap

Belts of bullets around our chests, near our hearts, along
With pictures of family behind us—they who'll tend to our
Arts—and the photo of a Sunday with a bridge of dried
            blood across a
River of silence. We have barely years to go before we can
            already take it,
So we make haste, together, and vow we'll never forget it.

With the back of its hands, the city closes its tear glands for
            years to come.
The city says goodbye to tearful views of Sundays, replacing
            it with a dry anger.
This is all anchored in the fading pictures of a Sunday of
            blood across a

Week of silence. . . . Sure we've all been used to closing our
            eyes, able to turn
Off our house logic's tv of a brain inside, making all reality
            bites but MTV fantasy,
Fun without sanctity, where all fact becomes fiction, im-
            mersed in the dic-
Tion of discos on a Saturday. But in some news flash tones

We hear again those pictures of a river of Sundays in their
            blood of silences
And hear the cry of populations, the fall of lives, rising up
Behind the smoke of our finely-cooked dinners. What we

Swallow is the call of battle, long begun. We say it's all to
Forget the blood in our rivers, e'en the blood that Jesus ran.
But we must not forget, together. The picture of a river of
            blood crossing a
Bridge of silence was taken on a Sunday. 'Twas by one

Paparrazi element whose name and address presently es-
            capes you, and me.

 

 

-----------------------------

This poem is written after an early 1980's—but now classic—radio song that sold millions internationally. The song is about a less famous massacre that occured in Northern Ireland, and was easily titled Sunday Bloody Sunday. It was written by the Irish band U2, to whom this poem is addressed.

 

 

 

Copyright © 1999, 2004 Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra. All rights reserved. Readers are welcome to view, save, file and print out single copies of this webpage for their personal use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy, transmission, or distribution of the work herein, or any excerpt, adaptation, abridgment or translation of same, may be made without written permission from the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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