"I am a Cameraman" By Douglas Dunn

This is a poem that I studied for my GCSE's. I thought it would be a nice reflection on topics which have been discussed at previous discussion groups.

They suffer, and I catch only the surface.

The rest is inexpressible, beyond

What can be recorded. You can't be them.

If they'd talk to you, you might guess

What pain is like though they might spit on you.

Film is just a reflection

Of the matchless despair of the century.

There have been twenty centuries since charity began.

Indignation is day-to-day stuff;

It keeps us off the streets, it keeps us watching.

Film has no words of its own.

It is a silent waste of things happening.

Without us, when it is too late to help.

What of the dignity of those caught suffering?

It hurts me. I robbed them of privacy.

My young friends think Film will be all of Art.

It will be revolutionary proof

Their films will not guess wrongly and will not lie.

They'll film what is happening behind barbed wire.

They'll always know the truth and be famous.

Politics softens everything.

Truth is known only to its victims.

All else is photographs-- a documentary

The starving and the playboys perish in.

Life disguises itself with professionalism.

Life tells the biggest lies of all,

And draws wages from itself.

Truth is a landscape the saintly tribes live on,

And all the lenses of Japan and Germany

Wouldn't know how to focus on it.

Life flickers on the frame like beautiful hummingbirds.

That is the film that always comes out blank.

The painting the artist can't get shapes to fit.

The poem that shrugs off every word you try.

The music no one has ever heard.