Everyone who has been in a war even a small war, even at second hand, knows it has changed their life.
Everyone who has been in a war knows how doors close, how borders are created and close, how the phone goes too late at night.
Everyone who has been in a war
knows who they know they don't know learns to keep silent learns to distrust the daylight learns the language of darkness becomes a creature of darkness.
Everyone who has been in a war believes there was another life the life they should have had a life of daylight and trust and long heart-to-hearts with friends, without borders;
but everyone who has been in a war knows that is just sentimental.
Everyone who has been in a war struggles with now and the future can't relinquish the selves that were lost when lives were lost that died when trust was murdered that were betrayed by the failure of justice.
The past is the land of the dead
of vengeful and poisonous shadows of furies posing as friends; Everyone who has been in a war has to deal with survival.
Kathleen McPhilemy teaches English at the City of Oxford College. Her latest poetry collecƟon is The Lion in the Forest (Katabasis, London 2004).