Smoke and mirrors
make it true
mirrors in gunsmoke-filled
committee-rooms, the glass
yellowed and the silvering holed,
give back to memory
only the true cartoon of those times:
cannonaded walls, smouldering
roof-trusses hanging through the ceilings;
one orderly desk
floating on a pool of bandages;
colours too smeared to read,
a bootstained bandolier,
a cockeyed shako.