Of Things That Become Forbidden: Photographs

by Barbara Guest

In the past we listened to photographs. They heard our voice speak.

Alive, active. What had been distance was memory. Dusk came,

Pushed us forward, emptying the laboratory each night undisturbed by

Erasure.

In the city of X, they lived together. Always morose, her lips

soothed him. The piano was arranged in the old manner, light entered the

window, street lamps at the single tree.

Emotion evoked by a single light on a subject is not transferable to

photographs of the improved city. The camera, once

commented freely amid rivering and lost gutters of treeless parks or avenue.

The old camera refused to penetrate the unknown. Its heart was soft,

unreliable.

Now distributed is photography of new government building. We are

forbidden to observe despair silent in old photographs.

 

National Poetry Month #29