To Louis Bertrand, Missionary to France 1852

By Breck England

1981 Poetry Contest 2nd Place Winner

Where your countryman, the Conqueror, stood

eight hundred years now, and where another

hundred years will give the siege back in blood,

at the Channel’s edge you and a brother

come down where water washes blood away

to baptize him to peace. The waves that lash

these rocky pastures turn to emerald-gray;

the lucent spirit warms the sea to glass.

This green canal has burned before; a war

will boil up waves of men again to storm

this font—so silent now—to beat the shore

of Normandy in mist whipped black with bombs—

But when the water clears, Christ’s first conquest

will then, as now, reflect the age of rest.