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Soldiers kill to live
but to survive will dredge their
souls of grief and cry
The first time I was part of a reading of Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, I had enough time to include (from memory) “Atonement.” As I was driving home, I kept thinking that there was just something “wrong” with the way I had read it. When I got home, I looked at the poem and realized I had remembered it incorrectly. The version I had recited from memory went like this:
Soldiers kill to live
but to survive will dredge their
souls for peace and cry.
Now when I read “Atonement” I read both versions, tell this story and say that the two poems illustrate a healing arc: from grief to peace, or at least more peace and less grief.
—Gregory Ross