Poetry
Poem of the month - Vanishing-Points
Published 09 September 2002
For Robert and Badral Young
Safe in an armchair in the dentist's surgery,
you observe your daughter's treatment:
being cruel to be kind again. You fix on
the criss-cross of her trainer's soles
in the foreground, on past her brave socks,
grazed knees, school jumper and clasped hands
to the vanishing-point that is her head,
laid back. It is the same perspective as
in the photograph of the thrown away body
of the young Taliban soldier. His trainers,
similarly foregrounded, look as if
they could be the same designer label.
But this vanishing-point is past his head, way out
in the impassive desert sands towards Kabul.
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