How would you describe the structure and the language of Keith Douglas' poem "How to Kill"?

One thing to notice about the poem's structure is the
absence of a conventional rhyme scheme. Only two lines (15 and 16) really seem to rhyme
in any standard way. Elsewhere Douglas uses "slant" rhymes, "rhyming" words that do not
rhyme exactly.  Thus, "ball" in line 1 sounds a bit like "kill" in line 6, and "long" in
line 3 sounds a bit like "sang" in line 4. One can even make the case that "man" in line
2 sounds a bit like "Open" in line 5. If this analysis is plausible, then the "rhyme
scheme" of stanza 1 would be as follows:
a,b,c,c,b,a. This same kind of
scheme appears in each of the following stanzas, so that the analysis just offered does
indeed seem plausible.

Is this interesting and unusual
rhyme scheme relevant to the meaning of the poem in any ways? Perhaps.  It is almost as
if each half of each stanza is the reverse, or mirror image, of the other half. This
structure seems relevant to the poem's idea that although men are separated in war, they
really are not very different from one another if they are viewed as human beings rather
than as soldiers. The speaker is a soldier who takes aim at another soldier in the scope
of his rifle, but the two men do not seem shockingly different except that one is about
to kill and the other is about to be killed. This idea that enemies
in war have much in common is a standard theme in much writing about war in the 20th
century.

The language of the poem is also worth examining.
That language is clear, simple, direct, and straightforward. The poem is highly
accessible and easy to understand. The poem's phrasing is blunt, unsentimental, and
realistic, like the speaker of the poem. Indeed, everything the speaker says in this
text about the other man and about their shared situation helps to characterize
him. He is a young man not too far from childhood; he is a young
man who finds himself in a situation in which he must kill, even if he does not want to
kill; and he is a young man who is capable of imaginatively identifying with the person
he is about to shoot. It is in fact his capacity for real feeling that makes his role as
killer all the more tragic.  When he looks at the enemy soldier, he doesn't see simply
an enemy; he sees a man (probably another young man)
who

. . .
smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
(9-10)

The shooter in this
poem is not some unimaginative, insensitive lout; it is precisely because he is a man of
sensitivity and sensibility that the poem even exists. The language this man speaks
perfectly suggests his personality. He is capable of emotional perceptiveness, but he is
not overly emotional or melodramatic. He is perfectly aware of the irony of his
situation, and so he uses language which is itself often ironic, as when he refers to "a
gift designed to kill" (6) or when he refers to "Death" as a "familiar," or a kind of
old friend (12).

The shooter in this poem is also highly
aware of the paradoxes of life, especially in wartime, and so he uses paradoxical
phrasing, as when he says that Death

readability="5">

. . . has made a man of dust
of a man
of flesh . . . (13-14)

Yet no
sooner does the speaker say that "Death" has done this than he suddenly and honestly
admits:

. . .
This sorcery
I do. . . .
(14-15)

The simple, plain
language, then, is appropriate to a speaker who is determined to be honest, to speak the
unvarnished truth, and even to condemn and mock himself, as he does in lines
15-17.