PART A: Which statement best expresses the theme of the poem? From boy soldier

What a smile! One large lamp for a face,

smaller lanterns where skin stretches over

bones waiting for muscle, body all angles.

His Kalashnikov1 fires at each moving

[5]thing before he knows what he drags

down. He halts movement of every

kind and fails to weigh whom he stops

dead or maims,2 his bullets

like jabs thrown before the thought

[10]to throw them, involuntary shudders

when someone, somewhere, steps over

his shallow, unmarked, mass grave.

But his smile remains undimmed,

inviting, not knowing what hit him,

[15]what snuffs out the wicks in his eyes.

Except that he moves and a face just like

his figures like him to stop all action

with a flick of finger on the trigger.