It is Dangerous, by Margaret Atwood

Lent, Day 13

While I was building neat
castles in the sandbox,
the hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpses

and as I walked to the school
washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated red bombs.

Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse

and the jungles are flaming, the under-
brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.

I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical
toys, my body
is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.

Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself

It is dangerous to read newspapers.

Each time I hit a key
on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees

another village explodes.

This photo of "peaceful trees" is a cheat, for I took it yesterday, but somewhere in all the rushing around today, arranging my Mum's funeral, I have lost my camera and the photos I took for this poem, of my red boots stepping on cracks. I am bereft. **

Which just goes to show how relevant this poem is - I am bereft because of a scruffy old camera and not being able to do Blip; meanwhile, mothers wait for news of their children on the Malaysian aeroplane; Syrian children continue to be killed; girls and grannies get raped - and I do share in responsibility. And it IS dangerous to read newspapers because I see and feel it all, but can't or don't do anything. And the risk is that, in the end, I don't care anymore. And then I'd no longer be human.

Still, I am asking for mercy - to find my camera tomorrow when I go looking for it - or will my Lent be even more vigorous than I'd planned??

** Found it! Went to Poundland where I'd figured it was, and it was in their safe - so here is the revised photo - I am no longer lying, and very happy owner again of a camera.