This
is the title poem from my 2009 collection (England: Littlejohn and Bray).
I post it here in commemoration and heartfelt thanks. If it weren't for that astonishing push, we wouldn't be as we are, here and now.
'Port Winston Mulberry'
(Considered by Evan Statler, sometime private, Canadian Armed Forces)
('Mulberry’ was the name given to artificially constructed harbours towed over to the Normandy coast to facilitate the D-Day landings, 6th June, 1944. Two were constructed. Remnants of one, nicknamed ‘Port Winston’, are still visible at Arromanches, itself codenamed ‘Gold Beach’, where British forces came ashore. Further east, around Courseulles, was ‘Juno Beach’, on which the Canadians landed at 7.55 am, in the last phase of the offensive.)
Look at Winston. Exploded sausages
floating in soup. That’s what Lauren’s youngest said,
and he should know--at ten,
commander of all knowledge
in this torn and herded world.
Then he took off, to where his mom
was seeing to a double-scoop pistachio,
leaving me on this beach,
postnuclear with its teethed ledges, sucking holes.
Back then it was just a moonscape,
but those were smaller times.
I should be at Courseulles,
where the guys hit the ground.
But this is as far east as I can push;
so I stand and let the breeze
haul me back the voices:
Cal D’Entremont setting up a jive
just before the tailgate flew,
screaming ‘Saskatoooooon’
and haring down ahead of me.
Hours on he was half-off a stretch of sack,
jolting through an archway:
a fazed lemur losing it on a branch,
no tail left to ring salvation in iron.
Rod McKercher stared at the sands in disgust,
thinking of another ring,
his Prince Edward Island beaches:
“Call that surf?”--and he was gone,
walking a straight line through the business,
strafing just so many gnats
crowding his rifle butt.
Top of the beach, I fouled a line,
thought I’d be shaking hands with The Man
in a foot of scummy hereafter;
McKercher dragged me up like I was
a pretty marker on the tenth green:
“You West Coast guys,” he cried
and motioned me to swing into his shadow,
to enter the books and the footage
in water-clawing step.
He dropped. I was blasting alone
till I wrenched my left foot
and had nothing but a hobble
and a dead man to scare Adolf
back down the road to Caen.
Lauren’s youngest appears
with a chocmint, single scoop,
which he aims at my mouth.
The gang want to turn inland;
the tapestry at Bayeux sounds cool.
I toss the keys to whoever can catch them,
request they report back at six:
“That’s 1800,” I tell the blond fire
on the youngest’s head, and rake it.
I’ve seen all the tapestries foolery can weave.
I’ve seen them pinned down on the linen,
two dimensions the only available space
for death: D’Entremont derelict on a stretcher,
McKercher jitterbugging into dust,
soaking on the sand that curled his lip.
The Espace disappears--and here’s a guy peddling flowers,
wheedling about my sweetheart in African French.
Why not? As he steps away, I pull the wrapping flat,
flower by flower, and pitch them at the Mulberry.
And they land and float
and rock and go under,
all the sweethearts who got serious
and drove an endless howl
through yawning June,
with its petals and its moons.
(Infantrymen going ashore from the H.M.C.S. Prince Henry. June 6th, 1944. Image: PO Dennis Sullivan / Canadian Department of National Defense / Library and Archives Canada / PA-132790.\r\n. There were more than 18,700 Canadian casualties and over 5,000 Canadian soldiers died.)
I post it here in commemoration and heartfelt thanks. If it weren't for that astonishing push, we wouldn't be as we are, here and now.
'Port Winston Mulberry'
(Considered by Evan Statler, sometime private, Canadian Armed Forces)
('Mulberry’ was the name given to artificially constructed harbours towed over to the Normandy coast to facilitate the D-Day landings, 6th June, 1944. Two were constructed. Remnants of one, nicknamed ‘Port Winston’, are still visible at Arromanches, itself codenamed ‘Gold Beach’, where British forces came ashore. Further east, around Courseulles, was ‘Juno Beach’, on which the Canadians landed at 7.55 am, in the last phase of the offensive.)
Look at Winston. Exploded sausages
floating in soup. That’s what Lauren’s youngest said,
and he should know--at ten,
commander of all knowledge
in this torn and herded world.
Then he took off, to where his mom
was seeing to a double-scoop pistachio,
leaving me on this beach,
postnuclear with its teethed ledges, sucking holes.
Back then it was just a moonscape,
but those were smaller times.
I should be at Courseulles,
where the guys hit the ground.
But this is as far east as I can push;
so I stand and let the breeze
haul me back the voices:
Cal D’Entremont setting up a jive
just before the tailgate flew,
screaming ‘Saskatoooooon’
and haring down ahead of me.
Hours on he was half-off a stretch of sack,
jolting through an archway:
a fazed lemur losing it on a branch,
no tail left to ring salvation in iron.
Rod McKercher stared at the sands in disgust,
thinking of another ring,
his Prince Edward Island beaches:
“Call that surf?”--and he was gone,
walking a straight line through the business,
strafing just so many gnats
crowding his rifle butt.
Top of the beach, I fouled a line,
thought I’d be shaking hands with The Man
in a foot of scummy hereafter;
McKercher dragged me up like I was
a pretty marker on the tenth green:
“You West Coast guys,” he cried
and motioned me to swing into his shadow,
to enter the books and the footage
in water-clawing step.
He dropped. I was blasting alone
till I wrenched my left foot
and had nothing but a hobble
and a dead man to scare Adolf
back down the road to Caen.
Lauren’s youngest appears
with a chocmint, single scoop,
which he aims at my mouth.
The gang want to turn inland;
the tapestry at Bayeux sounds cool.
I toss the keys to whoever can catch them,
request they report back at six:
“That’s 1800,” I tell the blond fire
on the youngest’s head, and rake it.
I’ve seen all the tapestries foolery can weave.
I’ve seen them pinned down on the linen,
two dimensions the only available space
for death: D’Entremont derelict on a stretcher,
McKercher jitterbugging into dust,
soaking on the sand that curled his lip.
The Espace disappears--and here’s a guy peddling flowers,
wheedling about my sweetheart in African French.
Why not? As he steps away, I pull the wrapping flat,
flower by flower, and pitch them at the Mulberry.
and rock and go under,
all the sweethearts who got serious
and drove an endless howl
through yawning June,
with its petals and its moons.
(Infantrymen going ashore from the H.M.C.S. Prince Henry. June 6th, 1944. Image: PO Dennis Sullivan / Canadian Department of National Defense / Library and Archives Canada / PA-132790.\r\n. There were more than 18,700 Canadian casualties and over 5,000 Canadian soldiers died.)
