Common blue

   '... a blue butterfly simply fell out of the sky
         and settled on the forefinger
         of my international bloody human hand.'

The frontispiece records the event that precipitated the composition of the poem. Richard Burns took this photo on May 25, 1985, outside the memorial museum at Šumarice, near the town of Kragujevac, in central Serbia. See also Two Photographs.

The museum commemorates the massacre by Nazi occupiers of 2,800 men, women and children from the town and surrounding villages, between 19^th & 21^st October, 1942. The lettering that can just be made out through the glass door of the museum quotes Hitler: Machen Sie mir dieses Land Deutsch ('Make this land German for me.')