Strange Meeting
This poem was written in the spring or early summer of 1918 and stands in the vanguard of Owen’s achievements. Siegfried Sassoon hailed it as his friend's passport to immortality. On the poet’s memorial in the grounds of Shrewsbury Abbey is engraved the famous quotation: "I am the enemy you killed, my friend which words continue to re-echo down the years."
Inspired probably by Sassoon’s The Rear Guard and based on an early draft of Earth’s Wheels, this recounts a dramatic meeting between two dead soldiers who had fought on opposing sides. No longer enemies they find it possible to see beyond conflict and hatred in a shared awareness.
