The real world’s out there on the TV news,
bonged in by Big Ben and a chunk-jerk fanfare,
then well-spoken lips that say: crises,
look, here’s one now, eyeliner round a stare
that with a single blink shifts its focus,
then soldiers’ helmets, smashed mud walls, the bare
brown faminescape, the rotor blades, a witness
in big close up, smudged face, mudded hair,
but not the wounds that would cause true distress
if shown, although they also are no more
nor real than coloured pixels which the miseen-
scène’s created out of there, not there

like him, some shepherd bending down to retch
with sobs beside his twisted shepherdess.