I don't have a poem about Antietam,
but Dave Smith told you I was going to read one.
So I heard they wrote one in the men's room
during the intermission.
[LAUGHTER]
We'll see how it goes.
It's called After Antietam.
We had two enlightening panels yesterday and today.
Yesterday's consisted of me and Dave Smith
and Bill Matthews and Steve Dunn.
And we had a lot of interesting questions, to which we
gave all of the right answers.
Today's panel gave the other answers.
[LAUGHTER]
One of the questions was about form,
and you're probably familiar with an old comment
that Frost made.
That when you're writing a poem, it's
the furthest thing from your mind.
But when it's over, that's all you can talk about.
So this poem being over, all I can tell you about it,
is that it begins in long lines of free verse, which
are bringing in a variety of material to the poem.
And they move toward a middle section, middle stanza--
14 lines of blank verse.
A regular meter but no rhyme.
And the final stanza the poem is in a favorite ornate form,
the Petrarchan sonnet, regular meter,
and an elaborate Italian rhyme scheme.
The reason for that is, to my mind, it's
about how the mind makes history and memory out
of the raw material.
And in doing that, to make something other than what
happened.
After Antietam.
The breeze rises loud up the crisp grass.
The lame in the field scream prayers
and wait for the bearers kindly and careful, arriving now.
The deserters crawl in the long grass.
Upstream, McClellan's pursuit hesitates.
His delay, his bloodless pause, spares Hood's
hard-marched bone-lean forces.
And these, like rumor the ghosts of these troop off South.
Rewarded with whiskey, Colonel Ferraro's thirsty 51st
drink happily.
Die on.
By the Dunkirk church in the smoking grove with Lady Jane,
the regiments' laughing stock.
Autumn in the mauve wood.
The farm girls will rein in and sit their mounts, silent.
The ponies lap and blow at the shallow stream.
Sunny hills swell.
A detail slips through the ripe corn fetching out
the shattered horses.
In pens, the swine are full for the harvest butchering
and the temperate feasts.
These wait, and again, all wait.
My love, lie in the day with me to the shade and power
of a sane order, when flesh and flesh breed history.
Word of this act.
Rodman slain, his men safe, dry.
Burnside baffled.
Cautious McClellan wary, and loving the men walking in
at dusk from the blue copse.
They're dragging, piling motion, orderly clearing cornfield
and hayfield of the carcasses of cavalry, wheel, and pack
horses.
Arranging memory on the green valley.
Late September down the valley, the wind
smoulders the sweet crazy smoke of the torched horses.
The wind black, the gristle popping.
Arm turned in arm, my love.
Lie on with me as the gusty November snow
settles uneasy against the scattered nettles,
across the black hay, the scorched timothy.
Silent as dormant limbs, as the seasons freeze terrain North
to Pennsylvania's hills.
At thaw, the seed distending in the soil
sprouts rapid pasture, green to a weak sun.
Out of May, the copper stream reels under the fume
of lilac blooming.
The arched stone bridge.
A stand of poplar saplings rises to the oriole.
Into the summer leaning warm, lie on with me, my love.
Low springs the wind.
Tall grow the raving grasses.