Context

• • Simon Armitage is an English poet, playwright and novelist.
  • Remmains is from his 2008 collectin, The Not Dead, which looks at the effect of war on ex-soldiers
  • It's based on the account of a british soldier who served in Iraq
• • A group of soliders shoot a man who is running away from a bank raid he's been involved in. His death is described in graphic detail
  • The soldier telling the story isn't sure whether the man was armed or not and this plays on his mind
  • he can't get the man's death out of his head - he is haunted by it