After three days of arguing the armistice was signed

in the French general’s private train

at a siding in the forest of Compiegne.

The Kaiser left for exile in Holland.

The military, unwilling to admit defeat,

still surrendered guns and planes.

No one told the people how bad things were.

A German corporal, recovering

after being gassed the month before,

a misfit who...

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The worst of the front was that trickle of rain

down the neck. Wet through, it felt like liberation.

And lice. Home on leave, people shunned him in trains.

Walled, hilltop village of his childhood:

as another war came, he returned to Barga.

Saw himself as immobile, a tree spreading roots.

When the Germans briefly retook his village

one self-portrait was damaged. The ...

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