In a previous post, I asked if anyone had heard of poets from the 2nd world war, and confessed that I could not  remember one.

But thanks to the BBC, this evening, on remembrance day, I heard about the life of another poet- Keith Douglas.

A man whose difficult childhood turned him into himself- into his own imagination. A difficult, mercurial man, born into extraordinary times. An intelligent man, with a precious gift.

A man who was to die three days after the D day landings, but whose poetry remains as a means of communicating the nature and horror of war.

Here is one of his poems, entitled ‘How to Kill’

Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.

Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears

And look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.

The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches

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