Meanwhile, the deranged viewers walk among the police officers who take notes, wash down the street of it blood, sweep up glass. Another metaphor likens the hanging "lanterns on the wrecks that clings, Empty husks of locust, to iron poles." With locusts, what was once green and lush, becomes brown and barren. Here, what was just minutes ago a living, breathing body, becomes dead and inert. And what is the reaction of the voyeurs to this sight? Was it what they wanted, hoped to see? Now the onlookers look just like patients, "Our throats were tight as tourniquets, Our feet were bound with splints, but now, Like convalescents intimate and gauche..." However, worse yet, is the horror of recognition that there is no reason why one person lives and another dies. This is the lesson for the day: This person could have been good or evil, a friend or foe, young or old. It did not matter. It as his time to die. Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken who is innocent?"

Almost like a chant, Shapiro now responds to himself and the other people at the accident. "For death in war is done by hands; Suicide has cause and stillbirth, logic;

And cancer, simple as a flower, blooms." If we go into battle, we perhaps will be killed. If we commit suicide, we realize that our life is over. With cancer, we know for some time that death is near. Yet with a car wreck, that occurs in an instant of a second, "And spatters all we knew of denouement. Across the expedient and wicked stones." This...

There is no reason why it is him, not one of us.
The remaining situation at the scene of the wreck is like those taking place every day. Shapiro so aptly draws a picture of human nature. After the ambulance shuts its doors and disappears, the firefighters put out their last flames, the police leave behind the chalked drawing, the audience stays behind to compare notes. They shake their heads and say, "Too bad. What a shame," all the while thinking, "Thank God that was not me." "Oh, that could have been Johnny." "I have to call Mary when I get home. See if she is all right." How sad it is to see what happened to John Doe. How glad it was not us.

Now, in 2005, unlike decades ago when Shapiro wrote his poem, it is not necessary to find a terrible situation outside the house. It is not even necessary to wait until the evening news. On every TV station is another reality show that lets the viewers view other lives vicariously. We can taste what it is like to eat maggots. We can feel what it is like to try to squirm out of a casket. We can know the anguish of being without a cigarette for weeks in a home of other tobacco addicts. We can see the police track a felon as he is shot down. We can cry when listening to the mother who watched her child drown. We can do all this with just a turn of the channel. Indeed, who is innocent?

Reference

Shapiro, Karl. New and Selected Poems 1940-1986. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.