in his dark room he's finally alone with spools of suffering set out in ordered rose the only light is red and softly glows as though this were a church and here priest preparing to in tone a mass belfast beirut phnom penh all flashes grass he has a job to do solutions slop in trays beneath his hands which did not tremble then though seem to now rural england home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel to fields which don't explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat something's happening a stranger's features faintly start to twist before his eyes a half-formed ghost he remembers the cries of this man's wife how he sought approval without words to do what someone must and how the blood stained into foreign dust a hundred agonies in black and white from which his editor will pick out five or six for sunday's supplement the reader's eyebrows prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers from the aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns a living and they do not care