Transcript Keith Douglas - Desert Flowers

Keith Douglas
1920-1944
Background
Keith was a tanker.He fought in
North Africa and at the D-Day
Invasion at Normandy, where he
was killed on June 9. Douglas was
also a student of Edmund
Blunden at Merton College before
he became a soldier, and arguably
the greatest poet, in the Second
World War.
Douglas wrote that "the behaviour
of the living and the appearance
of the dead were so accurately
described by the poets of the Great
War that every day on the
battlefields of the western desert .
. . their poems are illustrated". In
his poem "Desert Flowers" Douglas
remarks that he is only repeating
what Isaac Rosenberg has already
said.
Desert Flowers
Living in a wide landscape are the flowers The obvious meaning could be ordinary desert flowers or people, the
idea of men or young men as they bloom they die.
Rosenberg I only repeat what you were saying This means that death is always present
The shell and the hawk every hour The shell could be a cannon shell used in the war and the hawk could
be a raptor who is out kill or even a war time plane
The mind: but the body can fill This could mean that he is not thinking just reacting
the hungry flowers and the dogs who cry words
This could be the hungry men who have been fighting for
days without eating. This could also mean that the men
have been trained to act like dogs, ferocious, violent and
only car about themselves and surviving,
at nights, the most hostile things of all.
This suggests that at night the most of the fighting takes
place then. The war is fought at night.
But that is not new. Each time the night discards
This means it happens a lot and the night just rejects it.
Draperies on the eyes and leaves the mind awake
While the body tries to sleep the mind stays awake
I look each side of the door of sleep
They can not decide whether they are asleep or awake
for the little coin it will take
A reference to Roman times
to buy the secret I shall not keep.
The idea of death
I see men as trees suffering
To see men acting like trees, Big and strong ,but all trees we
to bits in the war
Lay the coin on my tongue and I will sing
In Roman times when people died they would lay a coin
on the persons tongue.
El Ballah, General
Hospital, 1943
The end
By Ryan,Ryan,Shane,Ross,Chris