quotes!

• “did the people of Vietnam use lanterns of stone?”

  • Lanterns made of stone suggests an ancient civilisation- stone is a material that takes millennia to wear down.
  • later in poem we see the culture's destruction is almost instantaneous as 'there was only time to scream'
• “a dream ago, perhaps”

  • Things before the war feel so unreal that they might as well be a dream
  • Repetition of perhaps shows the lack of possibility