One day two years ago, I visited the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy, a sombre and unsettling experience. This piece came directly from that day.

 

Quiet Rooms

Quiet rooms in stone villas,

fearful wanderings in fine spaces, staring

over wild June's glinting barbed-wire strands;

streaming faces tumble over cascading waterfronts,

where we trembled.

Nightmares overtake us like pounding tsunami

with insistent heft of awakened storm-sands.

 

The shock of nature's idle disregard

for human madness

flounces, cold-shouldered, among the terracota,

through madly flapping garden deckchairs,

as uncertain watchers scan the horizon

for steadily advancing seaside visitors

with growing panic, pounding hearts, a sudden pain -

eyes plead mere impossible innocence, or

fade to grey with evening's isolating gleam.

 

After the Norman invasion, November storms

hurl fierce autumnal salt-seas across the shocked strand,

as shivering bedroom glass shudders and bows,

whipped branches slashing 'Shhhhh!' and 'Rushhhhhhhh!'

chanting never forget, never forget, never forget …

Where fever'd shadows of flailing gardens, gales lashing

pale plaster walls, check once more their escape route - asserted

by the loom of a single street-light, alone and Junoesque,

quivering its exhausted shadow over strange shores.

 

Chris Hubbard

Arromanches-les-Bains, Normandy, France

2015.