Song for the Twentieth Maine
Noel Paladin Tripp
War Poetry Contest 2007 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
A long way down, loves, a long way down.
So far to fall to rise, rise, rise.
The green was all gold, and the grass not gone,
the heat heavy when you left. Lots of air,
thick enough to swat, shafts of
light amidst summerflies, and through
which you walked.
What was in your hearts besides
steel and fire? What moves a man
past God?
Brotherhood is no answer,
nor freedom either. You walked. You.
Past Boston, your gem and mine—
was freedom born here? It feels like
it. Past the sweet Charles you
walked—you marched—without
tarry. Let the Old North Church ring across
the cobblestones now.
Then the bleeding began,
that even now does not stop. We will all
bleed that blood, or wish to, until your work is
done.
Work begun behind hot rocks, a circle of
sweethearts, ducking low and whispering goodnight,
goodnight boys. The work of bleeding. Hot work in
winter and cold in summer.
Against the wall as over the wall came
a gray strangeness, history's curiosity.
Half-bred boys and devilish gentlemen. Death
wears what it likes.
But I do not have to tell you that,
as you were invited.
At that lavish table you bravely sat, and
took a glass. The jokes you told.
Into Virginia you walked, dying all the
while. Your feverish
dreams. Were they joined by doubt? Did you
in dark despair of winning strange Virginia? Lose
Virginia, and lose all.
Then, then on a hill, you finally surrendered.
You surrendered your dreams (to save mine?),
and charged. Were you blind then or did you
see?
Does it matter now courage, fear, zeal, obligation,
a perverse, twisted glee? Did you see the sun as
you charged or did it blind you? Was God in your hearts
or stuck right in your eyes?
God does not care what you call your gifts,
and I don't either. Whether I name it
for posterity or not. You charged.
A long way down, loves, a long way down.
At the bottom you found more death, the
death in the valley you knew on sight. Was
your calm like church? Or perhaps it was a
calm like a river, cutting lazily through
Maine on the last day of August, having
forgotten winter.
Maybe it was a calm like when you forget
about winter. A calm before the
early cider.
Each step after that, was it light? Did the
job at last do itself, as you'd been asking
all along with each foot you placed further
from home? We don't have a name for
that kind of determination anymore.
Sad to say it hasn't come up.
At last, in front the whole time, a
man shot through with that same something,
whispering its secret name to himself
as aloud he cried "Goodnight, sweethearts, goodnight,"
until you didn't miss your girl, your child, the
river. A society of one.
We don't have names and we don't have men like that. Just
a stark need.
But no matter our fall, by
a word are we saved, by a charge.
God gave a son, some gave all. Some gave more.
I write to understand why you came to
be standing on that hill, down to a man's
very last, for no reason science
can sound. I write to understand why.
Why high on a hill men stood without
flinching and ran without thinking and gave
without loving. The last great, loveless
gift a country ever got or a man will
ever need. They taught us how to fall.
A long way down, loves, a long way down.
