We Stop in Front of This Picture of Death by J.J. Steinfeld

Tragic Landscape, by Alex Colville, 1946

We Stop in Front of This Picture of Death

a drawing of a single war dead
in a perfectly lit corner of the art museum

we stop in front of this picture of death
and view it from different angles
caught in the aftermath not of battle
but of the incomprehension of war

not a metaphor or allegory you say
or some abstraction of inestimable sadness
but the austere depiction of loss
no one famous or long remembered

you say the subject must have been close to the artist
a good friend or dear neighbour
stolen in the prime of life
how else such compassion
guiding the mind and hand

stepping inside the drawing
so I can no longer see the present
I ask from which war was the fallen soldier,
of the victorious or the vanquished,
and cry for the dead

by J.J. Steinfeld

“We Stop in Front of This Picture of Death” from An Affection for Precipices (Serengeti Press, 2006) by J. J. Steinfeld, copyright © 2006 by J. J. Steinfeld, and first published in Witness: Anthology of Poetry (Edited by John B. Lee, Serengeti Press, 2004). Used by permission of the author.


Fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fifteen books, including Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Novel, Pottersfield Press), Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), An Affection for Precipices (Poetry, Serengeti Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books), and Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions). A new short story collection, Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell, is forthcoming from Ekstasis Editions.