Robert Capa’s Leica

Which is worse: to go like Gerda Taro,
war photographer, torso crushed by a tank;
or to bleed-out twenty years later murmuring her name?

The mind goes on plinking the same two notes
while the heart’s symphony spins and swells.
We’re still upset that Fred and Ginger never married.

I’ll warn you in the conquerer’s tongue – beware
their dirge of paper clips, the algorithms
they postulate for love, that albino crow.

I guess the latest is that aliens wrote Shakespeare.
A child’s rolling pita with a mortar casing.
Everyone is tweeting which side are you on?

You're right to call my bluff — I’m just a pianist
who never learnt to play. Capa dove with the G.I.’s
and cocked his camera made in Germany.

The curlew reels with her slender beak;
the wind strokes the salty gorse. At Omaha Beach
I'm told the waves still make that hushing sound.

(Reprinted with permission of the Vaughn Association, 2018, from Scintilla #22.)