‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend’
Wilfred Owen, ‘Strange Meeting’, 1918
*
wrestling forgiveness and guilt,
the retired colonel marches all day
in the gardens of the asylum,
up and down the cracked pavers,
the spent geraniums,
trying to remember
who he killed,
where he killed,
why he killed
trying to remember
the particular battle
in which he was killed
*
London, 1970