The Interpreter Poem by Ronald Strickland

Sent to a land with a language that I could not understand,
the people, with a culture, with interest,
why should they be an enemy?
This is what I was to translate,
the language that I would come to know.
With this, the people I began to understand,
but the war was to go on.
All the voices with words seem to sound the same,
an enemy, to me, with the language
that we could understand.
My culture, he does not understand?
Would my voice of words sound the same?
Why the hell am I in this foreign land,
speaking a language so that my enemies
can understand?