Proud-pied April: My heart gives you love

Since my Gratitude Monday post today is about the resting place of soldiers, let’s have a couple of National Poetry Month poems on the subject.

I gave you Carl Sandburg’s “The Grass” two years ago, but it’s worth another look. Because the grass is doing its work at Arlington, and at military cemeteries all over the world, and Sandburg captures that working in just a few, well-placed words. It blows me away every time.

“The Grass”

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

                                          I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

                                          What place is this?

                                          Where are we now?

                                          I am the grass.

                                          Let me work.

My other poem today is Walt Whitman’s “Dirge for Two Veterans”. Whitman had an up-close-and-personal view of the War Between the States; he volunteered as a nurse and witnessed some of the worst that could be seen, considering the carnage of that war and the state of medicine at that time.

(If you get a chance, you should visit Antietam National Battlefield, which has a display of some surgical instruments used during the war. It’s horrifying.)

The grave he describes is a double one: father and son, not an unheard-of event in that particular war. And how many sad processions like the one we see here have wound through Arlington’s drives? Way too many.

“Dirge for Two Veterans”

THE last sunbeam

Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,

On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,

Down a new-made double grave.

Lo! the moon ascending!

Up from the east, the silvery round moon;

Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;

Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,

And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles;

All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,

As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,

And the small drums steady whirring;

And every blow of the great convulsive drums,

Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father;

In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;

Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,

And the double grave awaits them.

Now nearer blow the bugles,

And the drums strike more convulsive;

And the day-light o'er the pavement quite has faded,

And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,

The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd;

('Tis some mother's large, transparent face,

In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march, you please me!

O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!

O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!

What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,

And the bugles and the drums give you music;

And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,

My heart gives you love.