D – D A Y TUESDAY, 6TH JUNE 1944

THE FALLEN BOYS HAVE GONE ASTRAY

This pulsing boy
A corpse
Within a splintered second
His tensioned grip
His sweating tremble
His prayerful pleas
All gone.

All gone
This shattered self
Now just
A floating hindrance
For other souls of
Other desperate boys
Not yet corpses
To thrust past
Against, aghast.

For they,
Corpses yet to be,
Wade against
Incoming Death
Saturating them
With salty demons
Caught unaware
In this speck of Time.

Dear Jesus,
Mother,
Salvage me
From Satan’s touch
From the froth
Of terrored death
Of chattering end
As more corpses
And the nearly corpses
Horizontally
Sway past
Or thud together.

Each corpse unique
Where those still
Complete with heads
And faces
May hold
Expression
Yet splintered
Shocked
Fiercely disapproving
Such change of state.

Here it ends,
Swilling and swaying
Along the gritty shore
Buckles and kit
Catching other
Broken dreams
Amid the filth
Of other previous lives
Stacked along the shallows
Of beach and history.

Poor boys, poor souls
Known now only
by discs of identity,
If still attached,
Yet useful in collection
Of these thousands
Identifying
The unwilling departed.

May Our Risen Lord,
Weeping,
Note these corded discs
As the souls troop in
Ununiformed for sure
United on some beach
We know not of
In hope and trust on
This remembered day.