GETTYSBURG
I.
The steeple's eye blurred with the snow.
Like bumps on a backbone, the row
Of cannon whitened in the weather.
The gray trees huddled close together,
And dizzying snow fell like smoke.
A diffuse sun slid down and broke
And poured in pieces down its light
That dropped like flowers, stiff and white.
The seminary president
Looked out on the snow's folded tent,
Glittering like linen, when the sheaves
Of sun-struck ice leaned from the eaves.
The basin's rim outfroze the bell
On mornings after hard snow fell
And wheat-sized flakes thrashed with their soft
Grains on the seminary loft
Where God's anointed had gone numb
Suffering a student's martyrdom,
Bare-necked to razor draughts of cold
And rime furring the blanket's fold.
High up, a paper snow revealed
The naked map of the battlefield.
He never felt blood start like birds
Inside his chest, or felt the words
Like birdshot, burning to the heart,
Unmuzzling war, that tore apart
The horses' legs like willow sticks,
Or the cavalrymen piled in ricks
Down in the thick part of the wood
In windfall limbs. The bodies stood
In piles like firewood, horse and men,
Into November, and by then
Buzzards had gathered, turning sly
On a grim spindle in the sky.
Lincoln had spoken in the dense
Roil of the air, to make some sense
Out of it, if he could. He soared
Like an old buzzard over bored
Faces of the indifferent dead,
Soaring toward some sun he said
Was shining on the comfortless.
A preacher recreates distress
Buried a hundred years ago
Under a hundred winters' snow
And finds his own distress there. High
Under the steeple's open eye,
Precariously the bats would hang
Until at evening the bell rang,
Like heavy fruits. All day the streams
Of wasps would jostle in the beams,
And the sun would scorch the sweating oak,
The loft cloying with squash-sweet smoke.
Below, the battleground was laid
In checkerboards of blue-green shade.
The black umbrellas in the sun's
Heat, floating buzzards, were the ones
Hatched from that generation's nests
That came to war as dinner guests.
If remarkable longevity
Hints at God's favor, then maybe
As much as human skulls, their shell
Casually bounds heaven and hell.
Today endless snow-blotted lines
Of cannon curl in scroll designs.
And if sometimes the black and green
Barrels are hieroglyphics seen
Along a margin, their sense is
Too cryptic to be read from his
Long vantage. History's serious qualm,
All that we learn by suffering from,
Reels on the flutter of an eye.
Today his daughter will untie
A bandage from her eyes, amazed
At the tints the dimpled snow has glazed.
The serious blindman's bluff is run;
Her naked eye in the naked sun
Gasps at the purest purple skin,
Green coruscations, rainbow spin
Around each branch. The flecks are gone
From her eyes, but now his take on
Apartness, as if blotted out
By bales of flying snow, his shout
Choked by flakes. To explain to her
War's providence once was a burr
Against his skin: the judgment there,
The armies gathering in the air.
But the tips of comforting grass would wink
Out of the snow, then brown and sink
Under the snow a hundred times;
The trees grew green as the meat of limes,
Robed at their door, then stripping bare,
Robbed with the land of power to care.
And the phenomenon repeats
In small in our heads: something cheats
Us of our power to understand
Because we grew out of the land
And share its human carelessness.
But though years drag us powerless,
We must enforce it on our terms.
The ascetic eye alone affirms
Outlasting all but the last tie,
Out-facing of the sensual lie,
The repetitious earth. And so
He can remember nights of snow
When the windows of the loft congealed
And snow walked on the battlefield
Blotting out the enormous loss
Like a great curtain drawn across.
And slowly all of it would fade:
Monuments, cannon, bones of shade
Trees, shivering, winter-bare. So let
The silence take us, and forget
The drowned world; let the soft drowning
Decent snow cover everything.
II.
The barntops glinted watery gold,
And up the Shenandoah rolled
A summer storm, its edge a loud
Mixture of sun and broken cloud
As gray and white as waves on rocks,
Washed light spearing between the blocks
Of rain. But the rain stopped before
We guests stepped from the chapel door.
Married in her grandmother's lace
With white flowers around her face,
She saw snow in the summer sky;
Trees burned like Moses' bush, her eye
Starred with a million drops. The blurred
Sun jogged the clouds aside, and furred
The wet grass with a chuckling coat
Of lizard-quick droplets, each mote
Gray as quicksilver. But the peeled
Sycamores drenched on the battlefield
Hoard golden shade under their arms.
From the steeple, the brick town and farms'
Outbuildings mellow like red fruits,
And the grass glows pale green as its shoots
That stood in March thaw-water. Wind
Twitched at the thunderstorm's tail-end
Combs long clouds into blue-green bars
Like tigers' stripes. Like tigers, wars
Rip by with bloody mouths, the day
Is tigerish that brings to bay
The human being in his lair
Or whorled caves, eye-pools, delicate hair.
That year was a still time she spent
For mending of her eyes. She went
Back to her home to rest; the stair
With drooping lips, the flight of bare
Railed steps up to the loft, had seemed
A purgatorial grade. It teemed
With stages that she couldn't climb
Where unreal colors danced in time.
When the mechanism worked again,
She saw the winter sunlight fan
Out in the study and define
Gold letters burning on the spine
Of a history she hadn't seen,
And gold flecks, drifting like a screen.
And toward sunset, her eyes were filled
With distinct sunbeams, like the milled
Edges of new coins in the spare
Rigidity of winter air;
And knife-edged colors in a rush,
A pheasant cock launched from the brush
In a burst of powdering feathers; fin
And rib of trees, huge fish hung in
Motionless water, just as if
The air itself were growing stiff
With the burden of the light. The red
Flush on the snow was like the spread
Of feverish blood, gathering to spill
Over the edge of each blue hill
Where the snow heaped up in ridges and,
Blue as the hollow of a hand,
Deep pockets. Rows of cannon creep
Like blue-green turtles, snow-capped, sleep
Like docile horses. Seeing, she
Gave back the time its history;
And her sight lent whatever worth
It had to her immediate earth.
The fox, grinning, leaped once beside,
Leaped once with all the pheasant's pride
While all the worlds were soaring, soar
Around one minute at the core.
III.
The buzzards mount oceans of wind,
Their wings beating like hearts, but pinned
In time. Transparent feathers burn
Like black-grained mica when they turn
Into the sun. Now that the wet
Grasses matted by snow forget
The winter, the wind-matted grasses
Breathe warm as cows as summer passes;
And the chopped clouds corsair the skies,
And grass green as a woman's eyes
Is turned aside by wind in the field.
And after other wounds have healed,
There is the climbing of the stair,
Watching from the bell's windows, where
The wind lifts summer to the sky,
Yourself a tear in the steeple's eye.