English Interlude

For the next 30 days or so I'm going to be doing a little bit of reading every day from the Norton Anthology of English Literature (20th Century). There are 30 slips of paper in my old Milwaukee Brewers hat, each one with a name of a writer. I pick; I read. And I thought I'd chronicle that reading here in the form of snippets of text, perhaps related to my own blogposts.

Nov. 15th reading:

"Vergissmeinnicht," by Keith Douglas (1920-1944)

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. (*means "Forget me not")
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.