Hi Colin,
A very Kiplinesque piece (at least in the way I read it!). I think
grasshopper's comments are similar to what I've thought as I've re-read it.
perhaps my Kiplingesque reading is because I tend to think it all happened
so long ago... It feels as if more than 3 years have passed between when I
read it and what it's describing... (To me it seems 50 or more years!)
I'd be tempted to try and omit the last stanza's details, too... but I
recognise the effect of the last line as well! (Its eye/your eye) and I
might be tempted to include that image in the action of the poem. Somewhere
near where the animal and the person are near the river, perhaps... Or try
to keep it as a clinching last line in a shorter poem. Know what I mean?
Bob
>From: "Dewar Colin [FVPC]" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: newsub/gan
>Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 11:02:39 -0000
>
>At the Mujahadeen base, Afghanistan 1989
>
>
>I remember the base where we stayed
>as young observers learning about life,
>the innocent stream down from the hill
>and the trees whose shade we lazed in
>while we waited for events to begin.
>
>I remember from the side of my eye
>glancing a lone dog, large and threadbare far off,
>at night, when I went for water
>seeing it across the stream,
>watching long before I did,
>and gone when I saw him.
>
>Only later when I thought back on youth and war,
>like many things seen afterwards for what they are
>did I realise it was a wolf
>living on the margins of its ravaged land.
>I remember sitting in a truck, among some fighting men,
>the hand too amicably on my thigh,
>what I could not have imagined then, imagined now,
>the proximity of the wolf's eye.
>
>
>Colin
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