To me, this is effective and I don't agree with others who want you to
adapt the last stanza. It has an argument which it seems to me would be
destroyed if you tried to tone down the ending.
I like it fine.
Thanks
SallyE
on 30/12/02 11:02 am, Dewar Colin [FVPC] at [log in to unmask]
wrote:
> 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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