"How To Kill," by Keith Douglas, addresses the idea of how simple it is to kill, and how easy it is to detach yourself from what that kill really means. In the second stanza of his poem, Douglas says, "Now in my dial of glass appears/The soldier who is going to die./He smiles, and moves about in ways/His mother knows, habits of his." The speaker of the poem watches the person he is about to shoot and recognizes that, once he pulls the trigger, somebody's little baby will be gone forever. Surprisingly, he seems undisturbed. Here, the poet uses, "now in my dial,"to point out the idea that the shooter is in fact a sniper, and this soldier seems to be recounting his actions. He may have been unshaken at the time of the shooting, but now he