Fifty miles of dark
water from a soil
once an enemy's
to a soil once
a friend's. Near
invisible are the grey bluffs
around the headland
of La Hague, the deep
port of Cherbourg
sleeping the fitful
sleep of the occupied
who could not dream
a hundred thousand allied troops
could pierce the restless dawn.
Against the plywood hull
you lean on choppy seas, the sour
scent of nausea and diesel fumes
thick in your nostrils. How far
the Bluegrass seems:
by now most of the burley
has been set to bed, by now
the first-cut of hay lays
drying in the fields,
and green blueberries begin
to blush. Grandmother would
be shelling peas, her calloused
thumb with one deft flick
dislodging them into the colander.
Those sunlit skies, those
hymns she hums, must
feel like some kind of delusion,
some false memory,
as you crouch here
in a tumultuous darkness,
seventeen hours of five-foot
waves in sporadic
moonlight to cross that fifty
miles to Omaha beach. What are
you thinking of
in these hours? Your brow
is furrowed. Your jaw grinds
side to side.
Do you take comfort
in the officer's words,
that bombers and artillery
will have done the dirty
work, that your seats are the best
in the house
for a light-show like the world
has never seen? Do you know
fear, the mortal kind
that freezes the heart?
Is it for love of country you are now
eight feet from the bow of this
wave-tossed landing-craft? Maybe
so. Maybe you are that myth
made flesh, single-minded, grim
with duty, grim as Joshua
tromping over Canaan. Or is it also for love
of John from Idaho,
who read a Psalm yesterday
in such a way
you felt for the first time
that it could speak
of something real? Is it
for Randall behind you, whose
boasts of bravery
have become the sobs
of a boy who now believes
in his mortality, who can now
see he is the first-cut
of hay in a bloody harvest
field? Was it for God
that Peter walked on waves,
or for his friend Jesus? Do you yet
know what you will see or what
you'll do? Have you imagined
how it could be, that there are
some things more tragic than death?
Do you say your mother's name?
As the ramp finally drops
and the front six men are mown down,
how do you find the strength to step outside
into chest-deep waves, your feet
slogging through sloppy
sands, churning in the sluggish way
known in nightmare?
Who could fault you in your fear
or if you'd failed to take
that tenuous way?
Not me
sitting comfortably here
remembering you.
By providence or dumb
luck, by a beast's instinct to survive
or by the discipline of even temperament,
somehow you are among
those scattered bands who crawl
across that beach alive, over
the corpses of friends, over the bodies
of beliefs, over the tank-crushed
flesh of innocence. You make it up a ravine
to the machine-gun nest
that has killed your countrymen
all morning long and find within
some German lads about your age
eyes full of rage and horror for what
they've been told to do
and what they've done,
what they've obeyed
and what higher values
they've betrayed, eyes now
fearful with sadness
and sadly relieved
as one turns at your sound.
And in that split second
before your bullets shut
them forever,
your eyes meet his
and an unspoken secret
passes between you.
For you and he both know
a patriot's love,
how love of country
is a powerful bluff,
an idol strong enough
to make heroes of evil men, enough
to make good men
go mad.
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