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Extracts

from 'Favela Children: Photos and Poems'
Favelachild

Little girl, I say to you, arise!
Come back from the dead
Two-dimensional photographic image
And open, once again, our eyes.

Little girl, I say to you, arise!

But Lord, she is already dead—
and will be dead for thirty years more;
buried in her strange favela,
trapped behind her prison door—
At least we thought she was dead.
She didn’t look alive to us.
Please open, once again, our eyes.






ii

You saw me talking with a courtyard girl
and turning, wanted me to come or go;
so I said ‘Are you posing for a picture?’
and then I heard a rooster crow.

For five seconds I had reached out my hand
and held the hem of her young life;
but we feared the gift of one another.

Please wait! Stay where you are!
Don’t disappear behind your door!
I need you! I need…
to get the focus right—
Just one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second more…

And I left confused,
needing a healing touch for my haemorrhaging guilt,
Longing to learn your language, not mine—
you laugh at me in a language of love,
while I still stutter through a smiling Fujica
wide enough to hide my insecurity behind.


iii

I saw a door open in heaven, and a throne,
and on the throne a little girl,
looking as if she had been slain, by freedom—
by our freedom to shut our eyes
as we pull the camera’s trigger
and pin the image to the wall.

Little girl, I say to you, arise—
Come back from the dead
Two-dimensional photographic image
And open, once again, our eyes.


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