How to kill (sound poem) - Keith Douglas

Subject: How to kill (sound poem) - Keith Douglas
From: GUEST,Jim Clark..London..England
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 08:20 PM

Keith Douglas (1920-1944) was born in Tunbridge Wells, the son of a regular army officer who had won the Military Cross in World War I and who, in 1927, deserted his wife and son. Lord Byron's family situation had been somewhat similar. Interestingly both poets were men of action with an almost obsessive interest in warfare. At Merton College, Oxford, Douglas was tutored by Edmund Blunden, a distinguished soldier-poet of the World War I. In 1940, Douglas enlisted in a cavalry regiment that was soon obliged to exchange its horses for tanks. In August 1942, they went into battle against Field Marshal Rommel's Africa Corps in the Egyptian desert. Forced to remain in reserve behind the lines, Douglas commandeered a truck and, in direct disobedience of orders, drove off to join his regiment..After being sent home suffering injuries from a landmine....he eventualy returned to frontline duty and was killed in Normandy in 1944...He is considered as possibly the greatest poet of world war 2..and heres the link to the page with the sound file
Regards..
a href="http://groups.msn.com/acousticmusiciansandpoetssoundarchive/poetrysounds.msnw?action=get_message&mview=&ID_Message=157">How to kill (sound poem) by Keith Douglas 1920 - 1944 WW2 Poet




Jim Clark..
PS.."Parabola" is a word from geometry..it refers to the apex of a curve,or something similar..(Trigonometry n all that stuff) ha ha)

All rights are reserved on this sound recording/copyright/patent Jim Clark 2002..

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

Subject: RE: How to kill (sound poem) - Keith Douglas
From: GUEST,Jim Clark..London..England
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 08:22 PM

Lets try that blue clicky thing again ha ha..

">How to kill (sound poem) by Keith Douglas 1920 - 1944 WW2 Poet

Subject: RE: How to kill (sound poem) - Keith Douglas
From: GUEST,Jim Clark..London..England
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 08:25 PM

and again ..if this dont work..i'm giving up ha ha..

How to kill (sound poem) by Keith Douglas 1920 - 1944 WW2 Poet