---

Keith Douglas - How to Kill
Work rating: Medium

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.
Source
The script ran 0.001 seconds.