“You bear the hatchet.

I’ll bury my heart.”

In just two lines and eight words, Dixon encompasses the emotional devastation of the speaker at the end of a relationship. Most notably, this is a play on the saying ‘to bury a hatchet’, which suggests a peaceful end to conflict, much like the title of Truce implies. Dixon turns this familiarity on its head, and thus is able to explore the conflict of love and violence and the compromise the speaker faces. She also puts the “heart” instead in the position of the weapon, particularly significant because although love is typically associated with emotional tenderness and vulnerability, that vulnerability can be seen as a threat to those who have built walls around themselves, much like the addressee of the poem. Therefore, a situation is presented where the reliable harm of a hatchet is seen to be preferable to the unpredictable extreme joys and pain that love can cause.

By repressing their love, the speaker surrenders to their past lover’s violence and desire to cause harm (possibly in a way they believe is defending themself). Lost love is also expressed through the rhythmic structure of both lines – they each contain two iambs and an unstressed syllable at the end, which could be seen as half-way to iambic pentameter. Widely used in sonnets and especially by Shakespeare to imply perfect and true love, this use of such a similar rhythm to iambic pentameter suggests that this love is one sided and will always fall short of being whole, further emphasising the speaker’s pain through the recognition of both the possibility but ultimate fallibility of this relationship.

Furthermore, the combination of the plosive consonance of “bear” and “bury” in comparison to the fricative of “hatchet” and “heart” creates a sonic depiction of this battle between love and violence, and how the two forces are at war throughout this poem. The fact that it is the verbs that are plosive could also be significant because it emphasizes the decisive harshness and irreversibility that these actions signify. This is further reinforced by how both lines have end stops and contain no medial caesura, as it makes the statements simple and yet indisputably final. 

Finally, the title of Truce is significant because it gives the impression that this is a long-waging conflict, which suggests not only the speaker’s resilience in their love, but also just how significant this final moment is – these are the final lines of a story, of a relationship, and an accepted but painful end for the speaker.