Remains

• 'On another occasion,'

  Seems to start mid conversation, the tone is anecdotal.
• 'we got sent out to tackle looters raiding a bank.'

  First Person Plural: Collective voice/shared experience.
• 'And one of them legs it up the road,'

  • Contrasting pronouns: creating an us vs. them culture and therefore defining the enemy.
  • Colloquial Language: adds to the casual and informal tone.
• 'probably armed, possibly not.'

  The speaker is doubtful and unsure, however the tone is very nonchalant and casual.
• 'Well myself and somebody else and somebody else are all of the same mind '

  Repetition: The speaker seems determined to explain that he wasn’t acting alone, foreshadowing his guilt and regret.
• 'So all three of us open fire. Three of a kind all letting fly,'

  Idiomatic Language: emphasising the informal and laid-back voice.
• 'and I swear, '

  Volta: The poetic voice changed to the first person singular, indicated that the story will now get more personal.

  The tone also becomes more somber and grave, perhaps revealing that the previous nonchalance was a facade.
• 'I see every round as it rips through his life-'

  Metaphor: the violence shockingly contrasts with the colloquial style of the first two stanzas; the tone has completely changed.

  The speaker has let his guard down and his reveals how haunting his memories actually are.
• 'I see broad daylight on the other side.'

  Juxtaposition: daylight symbolising a new day, contrasted against the ending of a man’s life. A grotesque, exaggerated image of a punctured body.
• 'So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times /and he’s there on the ground,'

  Pronoun/Noun: It seems important for the speaker to distance himself from his victim.

  He speaks about him in quite a callous way, possibly to avoid facing the reality of what he’s done.

  He has also reverted back to his previous nonchalant tone.

  Clearly, the speaker feels the need to maintain the veneer of indifference in order to cope with the memory.
• sort of inside out,'

  • Colloquialism: A childish description of the man’s body – the speaker seems unable to process it in an adult way.
  • It is an insensitive way to describe the maimed and butchered body.
  • This emphasises that the speaker wants to disassociate from the reality of what he’s done and therefore chooses to put on a guise of nonchalance.
• 'pain itself, the image of agony.'

  • Hyperbolic Metaphor: the speaker feels as though the man is the epitome of suffering and the tone has become sombre yet again; tinged with shame and regret.
  • He is trying to control his emotions, however the truth finds its way out.
• 'One of my mates goes by and tosses his guts back into his body. / Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.'

  Verbs: there is no respect for the dead man; his body is handled as a piece of rubbish; insignificant.
• 'End of story, except not really. His blood-shadow stays on the street,'

  Volta: Turning point of the poem. We move from the event itself to the aftermath for the soldier.
• 'and out on patrol / I walk right over it week after week. /Then I’m home on leave.'
• 'But I blink'

  The stanza ending reflects the act of blinking – there is a pause and the enjambment carries you forwards, but the horror is still there when the next stanza starts (even though he blinks, he still sees the same images in his mind).
• 'and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.'

  Double meaning: The looters bursts through the speaker’s MEMORY bank, and is seen in the speaker’s mind as bursting through the bank he was looting.
• 'Sleep, and he’s probably armed, and possibly not.'

  Repetition: Emphasises how the speaker is replaying the events in his mind and hints at his inner turmoil.
• 'Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds. And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out –'

  Sleep and dream symbolise a resting state, and it is significant that at the times when one’s mind is meant to be at its most peaceful, this is in fact when the speaker is tormented the most.

  It magnifies just how haunted he is.
• 'he’s here in my head when I close my eyes, /dug in behind enemy lines,'

  • The metaphor compares the memory stuck in his mind to a soldier in a trench.
  • The enemy could be his own mind.
  • The verb “dug” has connotations of the memory being stuck and rooted firmly in his mind.
• 'not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land or six-feet-under in desert sand,'

  • The violent parts of the compound adjectives, “stunned” and “smothered”, show how the place is affected by war.
  • The long line and the sibilance slow the pace and reflect the speaker’s lack of clear thought.
• 'but near to the knuckle, here and now, his bloody life in my bloody hands.'

  • Double meaning: 1. The looter’s blood. 2. The speaker is swearing in anger.
  • This could be a possible reference to Macbeth – after persuading her husband to kill King Duncan, Lady Macbeth, wracked by the guilt, sleepwalks and tries desperately to wash the imaginary blood from her hands.
  • This allusion hints that the speaker has been unbalanced/unhinged by his guilt, as Lady Macbeth was.