Keith Douglas

Keith Castellain Douglas (24 January 1920 – 9 June 1944) was a 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.

Quotes

• Remember me when I am dead
  And simplify me when I’m dead.
  • "Simplify me when I’m Dead", in Collected Poems (1951), pp. 56–7

• 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.
  • "Vergissmeinnicht, 1943", in Collected Poems (1951), p. 34

External links

• Keith Douglas, Collected Poems, ed. John Waller, G. S. Fraser and J. C. Hall (London, 1966 [1951])