In formost ranks, where bullets always strike,
With stalwart fighting-men, defenders under arms
(A common danger faced as one)
You carried just a camera, not a gun,
Recording gunfire and the violent scene,
Wide-angled shots, but risky close-ups, too.
Then, all at once, a spider came in view,
Together with its web: your finger tensed -
And on your film we saw a network spread
Of gossamer, so deftly woven, thread by thread,
A circle scored by radiating lines,
So like a target asking to be hit ... dead centre.
And hit you where, and fell. But the marksman spy
Was not as fast as you with band and eye,
Although the pressure of his finger had unleashed
A lethal chain of happenings that your response
bore fatal witness to.
They may say now that what you bore
Upon your shoulder looked mightly like a gun,
A rocket-launcher or a band-grenade,
They added perfidy to lying
And banned the use of transport for the dying.
But facts they cannot change, you threatened them
WIth no projectile, neither bomb nor shell,
But only with those pictures of a world you knew too well,
For you had seen their strategy of snares
As plainly as that cobweb slanting in the light.