implies that, to us,
all objects are subjects.
What we have not named
or beheld as a symbol
escapes our notice.
We never look at two people
or one person twice
in the same way.
It is very rude to take close-ups and, except
when engaged, we don’t:
lovers, approaching to kiss,
instinctively shut their eyes before their faces
can be reduced to
anatomical data.
Instructive it may be to peer through lenses:
each time we do, though, we should apologise
to the remote or the small for intruding
upon their quiddities.
The camera records
visual facts: ie.,
all may be fictions.
Flash-backs falsify the Past:
they forget
the remembering Present.
On the screen we can only
witness human behaviour:
Choice is for camera-crews.
The camera may
do justice to laughter, but must
degrade sorrow.
-- W. H. Auden (1907- 1973), BritishAmerican poet, essayist, and teacher
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