Group work

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 waves 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.


The narrative of the poem is slow and seems like the person is breathing heavily, in a dangerous place, and in the moment. There is a feeling of calm which we do not usually associate with killing. However, there seems to be panic and confusion beneath the calm of the poem, which becomes apparent through the sentence structure of the poem. Many of the stanzas include single run-on sentences. The confusion by this speaker is meant to evoke a similar feeling in the reader. The place where this person finds himself is not natural, and he wants the audience to know this. The speaker wants the reader to understand that there is an uncomfortable ease with which we now engage in war and killing. In the beginning of the poem, the man talks about a ball being in his hands. This ball seems symbolize the fact that it is his turn to kill. The person in the poem does not seem to want the power to kill, which he realizes he has when he talks about glass balls and sorcery. This gives the impression that he is in control of a man's fate. The poem ends with a statement about the ease at which life becomes death. The speaker ends the poem with a sense of reflection, looking back at his action, and just how easy it was.