Poem of the Week: Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not) - Keith Douglas

Today's poem is by one of the greatest English war-poets, Keith Douglas. Writing throughout WWII, Douglas 's work gives horrific insights into the life of a soldier. This poem reads like a poetic journal entry, describing his experience of driving his tank through an old battlefield and coming across the body of a German soldier. There's a sort of detached quality to Douglas; his cold descriptions leave the response up to the reader, but my own response this week to his work has been shock and despair at the horrible futility of war.
As your read, read aloud so you can get the feel of the enjambment and slant-rhyme, two techniques that really add to the disastrous feeling of the scene Douglas is describing.



Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not)
By Keith Douglas

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.