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This is a pistol. This is the blunt end, And this is the naughty end - Which is not to be pointed at anyone But that blotched black-and-yellow trooper Storming forward with a sub-machinegun. This is a pistol, A 9 mm semi-automatic Browning pistol. You Have seen it come apart and go together: Now you Strip it. Good. This is the magazine, These are the bullets, And these the commands. And now - The guns crack: Concussion: smoke: Concussion concussion concussion: Smoke: Concussion: Smoke: Gulls scream, and the echoes Roll back from the ragged cliffs. Walking back past the white manuka, The young men relate Their fathers' and their grandfathers' stories. The child of fifteen shot face to face: "I had a wife and family to go back to." The paratrooper dead at dawn on Crete: "Gott mit uns" on his belt. |
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(i) The setting of this poem is New Zealand, and this piece is about (in part) a new generation living in the shadow of the wartime memories of previous generations.
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