Vergissmeinnicht

How I chose this week's poem was by the title. It really caught my eye and I wanted to know what it meant and what it had to do with the poem. It looked foreign to me, maybe German? Then I looked a little into the poem and saw that it was about a soldier and I thought wow maybe I was right? I looked it up and found that I was in fact right that the title was German and I also found out that it means “forget me not.” Once I found that out it all started to make sense with the whole war theme. After reading through the poem I could tell that there was a very emotional tone and lets just say it was not a happy tone… it was sad like it was still a fresh wound. The poem says “three weeks gone” making it seem like it was just yesterday to the soldier, and he was on the battle grounds where he killed a German soldier. He finds where his body lies, and describes the scene in such detail and it isn’t pretty; the soldier really shows the brutality of war. He looks at the dead soldier in such a disrespectful tone until he finds the picture of the soldier’s lover. In the third stanza he starts talking about the picture of the soldier’s lover Steffi. Then there is a break and the next stanza is different, he starts the new stanza with we, which is weird maybe it is that the soldier will always be attached to the soldier as his killer, but he will also be attached to the soldier’s lover through that brutality of war. So maybe putting the title “forget me not” can relate to the brutality of war in the fact that many who have loved ones in war fret that they will be forgotten, but once that soldier dies they are the ones who are never forgotten… by there lover and their killers. “And death who had the soldier singled has done the lover mortal hurt,” is the last line of the poem and it shows that there will be mutual remembrance for that soldier.