Everyday Khaki Analysis Line By Line

The first line in the poem, “Lying in dug-outs, joking idly, wearily;” I immediately questioned if this poem was even about the war. When I think about war I don’t think of laughter and joking, I think about sadness and heartache. As I continued to read I realized that the poem was about how photographs gave the men an escape from war. “Watching the candle guttering in the draught”, meaning they watched the candle flame flutter in the cool air. They watched the flame every night as they looked at their photographs. “Hearing the great shells go high over us, eerily singing; how often have I turned over, and laughed”, telling how even though gunshots are flying over their heads, they are still able to enjoy their memories that the photos bring.
Yellow is bright and happy, blue is dark and sad. When I read the line “With pity and pride, photographs of all colors”, I imagined the different type of feelings the pictures bring like, sadness and joy. The next couple lines continue to talk about the photographs themselves. “All sizes, subjects; khaki brothers in France; Or mother’s faces worn with countless dolours; Or girls whose eyes were challenging and must dance”. When I first read those lines I figured they must have been pictures of joyful memories. “Khaki brothers in France”, friends from their past military units. “Girls whose eyes were challenging and must dance”, girls with puppy dog eyes that are full of energy and “must dance”. But in the middle line, there was a word I didn’t know, dolours. When I looked up the word the definition was a state of great sorrow or distress. Instead of all the photos bringing happy memories they could also bring sad ones. The last fours lines “ But once - O why did he keep that bitter token of a dead Love? - that boy, who, suddenly moved, showed me, his eyes wet, his low talk broken, a girl who better had not been beloved”. A heartbroken young man kept a picture of his past partner knowing that he did not have their heart