How Easy To Make A Ghost
How to Kill
by Keith Douglas
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, now infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.
from Keith Douglas: The Complete Poems © Faber & Faber, Ltd.
The email report from the New York Times would wait until morning. I delayed reading the account of the invasion of Ukraine in the late evening. Feeling nausea, I knew additional detail would make rest more difficult. This morning the first thought in my mind was of the industrialized killing now taking place, — of the widows, widowers, the orphans that are being left behind.
The politics of Russia and Ukraine is an old story. The bellicose ruler of Russia wants a former colony back. Killing is simply the “cost of doing business.”
The species Homo Sapiens, language enabled mammals, have “the gift” of the knowledge of good and evil. The gift is like a ball that sings. This is a sorcery of sorts. Flesh and blood individuals, known and loved by their mothers, the wave of love travels into vacancy…
How easy it is to make a ghost.
Keith Castellain Douglas (24 January 1920 – 9 June 1944) was an English poet and soldier noted for his war poetry during the Second World War and his wry memoir of the Western Desert campaign, Alamein to Zem Zem. He was killed in action during the invasion of Normandy. — Wikipedia
