I’d forgotten this one. Thanks for reminding me of it.

(You know, they hand out tenure for this sort of thing, especially when it’s this good …)

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.

Keith Douglas

I find it ridiculous that some critics speak of Douglas’s detachment and “lack of guilt” as indicative of the modern experience of war. In two words – “Being damned…” – he shows us the price any sane soldier pays for participation in mass murder, however noble the cause.

…