"nissen" poems
Young Americans, all volunteers
Sampling English women and English beer
Over sexed, over paid and over here
In the scrubby bit next to Sally's house there used to stand another cottage. If you scrape away some soil you can find floor bricks. A german fighter tailed some bombers back, shot one down as it made its final landing approach.It crashed short, demolishing the cottage. When Sally first moved in there were bits of metal laying around and dials hanging in the trees. An old boy turned up one day, a surviving crew member. They gave him some bits of his old plane to take home.
On planes with names like
Frivolous Sal, Dauntless Dotty
Million $ Baby, Memphis Belle
Sylvia was a child during the war.They saw a german fighter shot down, the pilot managed to open his chute. He walked up to their house, knocked on the door and gave himself up. Sylvia's dad marched him down to the Police Station.
Braving the freezing hostile skies
Thousands and thousands of you guys
How can we thank you
After you've died?
Next to Diane's house, hidden in the trees are the remains of nissen huts built as accommodation for the airmen. Not much left after 70 years, a few concrete block walls. Now and again she used to see some misty-eyed old guy gazing into the trees.
Long after you're gone
The land remembers
Bears the scars
Of those few years of turmoil
David is a gardener in our village, nice guy, should have retired by now. Don't think his father ever kept in touch.
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 1:16 PM UTC
making the best
of the battery,
typing fast
hurredly.
not worrying if it rhymes.
we thought it
was the searching
that drained our resources.
yet it was the cheap and shoddy
pink thing that caused
the uproar, stressfully.
no need to hide then,
we have become as public,
all things considered.
demolishing the nissen hut,
where thistles grow.
sbm.
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 1:42 AM UTC
A smooth and straight, an ordinary road
But in contrast to the houses of the area with trim hedges
Round their gardens with their cherry and apple trees,
That smooth and straight, and ordinary road, was an outsider
And ditto to re-occupied Nissen huts.
Heath grass had been cut short up to the edge of the road.
Down the centre there were proper markings
And cat's eyes. Now, I retain a picture of a squeaky clean
Smooth surface, colour a silvery, smoky grey.
Cars, trucks, some US military,
Would pass you by, grouped or singly, brusquely,
An air of unconcern native to them,
Engines' noises punctuating dominance
And if you ever thought to walk, even slide
A foot onto this road, vehicles
Would not stop and there would result outrage.
Sometimes I dreamt of a distant city.
I figured plain buildings hard to get to know, imposing,
In my mind it would be a quiet place
And, of course,
Important. Fifty miles; what
Anyone would do there, beyond imagining;
It all meant something different
At less than seven years old.
Those days we caught a bus, which went the other way,
To go to school. We had to cross that silver/grey road,
That inflexible road, then walk
A furlong or so up a gentle slope
Across the grassy heath to a winding
Road shaded by a deciduous wood, with crows;
A bendy, friendlier road.
With some of us larking about we went in a group
To wait for the bus.
Anywhere near that first road,
I walked close to the parent escorting us.
I would always feel unsafe near such an unkind road.
Apr 5, 2021
Apr 5, 2021 at 4:00 AM UTC