This poem, written by Siegfried Sassoon, is one of my favorites. He was born into a wealthy Jewish family, and during the war that he went through, he had a bitter and violent reaction to the realities of war. It can be seen clearly in his poetry, which is filled with irony and satire.

The poem shows a soldier, who lost his legs and his sight. A general pattern for each of the stanzas can be seen. In the first line of each stanza, it always starts with "Does it matter"" or "Do they matter"" Then, the remainder of the first line would be something that the soldier experienced, that he is asking if those things matter. The next four lines try to explain why it does not matter. However, it is apparently very ironic. Also notice that he uses the pronoun "your", trying to make the reader...