daughters of d-day:

Poem:"Some In Pieces" by Darnel Arnoult from What Travels With Us ©
Louisiana State University Press.  Reprinted with permission.

Some In Pieces

In World War Two
the oldest
of my uncles
picked up
dead bodies
dead weight
some in pieces
and threw them
onto the beds
of trucks.
His work spread
far as he could see.
When he came
home he poured
salted peanuts
into a Co-Cola
and prepared
for life
with folks
who could
never know
some things
as long
as they lived.

Carentan O Carentan (1944)  

By Louis Simpson

Trees in the old days used to stand

And shape a shady lane

Where lovers wandered hand in hand

Who came from Carentan.

This was the shining green canal

Where we came two by two

Walking at combat-interval.

Such trees we never knew.

The day was early June, the ground

Was soft and bright with dew.

Far away the guns did sound,

But here the sky was blue.

The sky was blue, but there a smoke

Hung still above the sea

Where the ships together spoke

To towns we could not see.

Could you have seen us through a glass

You would have said a walk

Of farmers out to turn the grass,

Each with his own hay-fork.

The watchers in their leopard suits

Waited till it was time,

And aimed between the belt and boot

And let the barrel climb.

I must lie down at once, there is

A hammer at my knee.

And call it death or cowardice,

Don't count again on me.

Everything's all right, Mother,

Everyone gets the same

At one time or another.

It's all in the game.

I never strolled, nor ever shall,

Down such a leafy lane.

I never drank in a canal,

Nor ever shall again.

There is a whistling in the leaves

And it is not the wind,

The twigs are falling from the knives

That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,

The way to turn and shoot.

But the Sergeant's silent

That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly

Our place upon the map.

But the Captain's sickly

And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what's my duty,

My place in the platoon?

He too's a sleeping beauty,

Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O Carentan

Before we met with you

We never yet had lost a man

Or known what death could do.

Poem: Lines 80-106 from "A Friend Consigned to Death" in The Iliad  by Homer,

translated by Robert Fitzgerald. copyright © 2004 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

"Sleeping so? Thou hast forgotten me,

Akhilleus. Never was I uncared for

in life but am in death. Accord me burial

in all haste: let me pass the gates of Death.

Shades that are images of used-up men

motion me away, will not receive me

among their hosts beyond the river. I wander

about the wide gates and the hall of Death.

Give me your hand. I sorrow.

When thou shalt have allotted me my fire

I will not fare here from the dark again.

As living men we'll no more sit apart

from our companions, making plans. The day

of wrath appointed for me at my birth

engulfed and took me down. Thou too, Akhilleus,

face iron destiny, godlike as thou art,

to die under the wall of highborn Trojans.

One more message, one behest, I leave thee:

not to inter my bones apart from thine

but close together, as we grew together,

in thy family's hall. Menoitios

from Opoeis had brought me, under a cloud,

a boy still, on the day I killed the son

of Lord Amphídamas--though I wished it not-

in childish anger over a game of dice.

Pêleus, master of horse, adopted me

and reared me kindly, naming me your squire.

So may the same urn hide our bones, the one

of gold your gracious mother gave."