Come Up From the Fields, Father

Come up from the fields, father, here’s a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door, mother, here’s
a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves
fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and
grapes on the trellis’d vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent
after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful,
and the farm prospers well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come, father, come
at the daughter’s call,
And come to the entry, mother, to the front door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous,
her steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor
adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly,
0 this is not our son’s writing, yet his name
is sign’d,
0 a strange hand writes for our dear son,
0 stricken mother’s soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black,
she catches the main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast,
cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah, now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all
its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head,
very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown
daughter speaks through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and
dismay’d),
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will
soon be better.

Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor maybe
needs to be better, that brave and simple soul),
While they stand at home at the door he is
dead already,
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch’d, then at night
fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with
one deep longing,
0 that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent
from life escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead
son.

Walt Whitman - a poem for Memorial Day

John Neff's Honoring the Civil War Dead (his take on) the Problem of Reconciliation

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

And what a perfect morning it is - the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the helicopters are circling overhead. It is a beautiful day in Los Angeles.

Given my tendency to reflect on my work of the past several years, I thought it appropriate to discuss one of my favorite books on the issue of national reconciliation in the wake of civil war (sheesh - that would make a great book subtitle!).

John R. Neff is one of the few (and I mean few) who go against the grain by suggesting that all was not so benignly reconciliationist (for better or worse) during the post war decades - especially in terms of commemoration. Sure, as he admits, there were a great deal of spread-eagle, but alas, issue-free reconciliatory efforts/movements/gestures...or whatever you choose to call them...

...but what of those who persistently reminded citizens of the more troubling memories of the war years? What of those memories that did not fold neatly within the confines of the current understanding of reconciliation? Where do they fit in the commemorative ethos? Neff’s book, Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation examines those outside the reconciliation framework defined by most scholars. Basking in the light of the “cause victorious,” Neff argues, many of the Union veterans mourning their fallen comrades harbored bitter resentment toward their former enemies.

Reasoning that veterans could in no way imagine the memories of their fallen comrades apart from the contentions of war, he suggests their sentiments represent the key challenge to reconciliatory efforts in the late-nineteenth century. This compelling study does more to expose the lingering bitterness than any of its predecessors.

Yet it oversimplifies antagonisms by reinforcing a dichotomy of reconciled versus unreconciled veterans. Analyzing these individuals in terms of stark opposition – those who were committed to reconciliation and those who were not – may indeed be a dead end.

It is this over simplification that I find so troubling - and what I also find to be the hardest thing to overcome when considering this era. But riddle me this - Can one favor....even embrace reconciliation on antagonistic terms? It seems that yes indeed, one can - especially if you were a Civil War veteran.

I have fired more than one warning shot right here on Cosmic America - and have written a (soon to be published) book on the subject. So stay tuned...there will be more to follow.

Peace,

Keith