Vergissmeinnicht - 1591 Words

â€Å"Vergissmeinnicht† (translated â€Å"forget me not†) by Keith Douglas is a realistic poem outlining a soldier’s firsthand account of his return to the site of a fierce battle. Upon his arrival, â€Å"three weeks gone† (1) since the battle, he finds the deceased German adversary, simply known as â€Å"the soldier† (4), who had fired at his tank just before his demise. The poem stirs the emotions of the reader, utilizing specific descriptions of the scene and bringing the feelings of loss and despair felt by the woman, Steffi, who has lost her significant other into the mix. Through a varying rhyme scheme, stable yet altering structure, and vivid imagery, Douglas describes the conditions and brutality of war and how each soldier will be remembered by both†¦show more content†¦It is clear that thoughts are not made in complete, perfect sentences. Adding in the toll of war and seeing an enemy combatant rotting and â€Å"sprawling in the s un† (4) certainly would cause a stream of thoughts to rush through one’s mind. Douglas undoubtedly portrays this variance in sentence structures masterfully in the entirety of the poem. Douglas also masterfully uses vivid imagery as a means to detail the conditions and brutality of war. Each stanza has some sort of vivid imagery that emphasizes Douglas’s point. In the first stanza, Douglas describes the land as â€Å"the nightmare ground† (2), enforcing the violent actions and carnage which must have occurred in that area. He then shifts his focus to the deceased soldier â€Å"sprawling in the sun† (4). This is the first implication that the soldier is dead and shows the reader the impact of what happened three weeks prior at that location. In the last two lines of stanza two, the soldier tells of his memory of the deceased soldier, explaining that he fired a shot at his tank and â€Å"hit [it]†¦like the entry of a demon† (7-8). This reference to the bullet as being a demon again goes to the intense and vicious nature of war. Moreover, Douglas goes on further to vividly describe the scene. The â€Å"gunpit spoil† (9) and menti on of the body being â€Å"decayed† (16), both forms of organic