A poem about the civil war.
I Know How The Moon Rises by Theresa C. Newbill
The South is filled with puzzled moans
where soldiers laid their phantom bones
uncoffined, as is, as found,
strange eyed constellations
above each mound,
waning tapered glimmering cold,
frameless souls
none might touch or want to hold.
A whirl of wings by mighty fanned flies
seized the corporal softness
of their unheard cries.
Hourly posted sheets of scheduled death
haunting, daunting, taunting the next of kin
recalling the quaint old southern ways
of a babyhood's innocent days.
A letter brought whose lines disclose,
disbanded traditions
against trooped apparitions northern bound.
Towering homes slacked with high fires,
a passionate example of martial desires.
Voices weak enough to hear the chiming of winds
tell the story of the tragedy of things,
while once they stood prest to dreams
in white columned homes of high beams,
where honor missed the pale of their faces,
drearily, wearily, eerily a brief time ago
treading back slowly
the track of their march,
hopes abound in careless air,
life beats are low and time is rare.
It was sad enough and prophetic to sight
how black tarred faces mouthed-out to the night
wholly marred by gloom and oppression,
reflecting moralists of history's recession,
worth more than cotton or gin,
deserving respect with deeds well done,
singing spirituals under magnolia trees
royal reckoned attributes,
serene, sorrowful, and free.
Mass causalities, a pilgrimage of pain
ripening years have run,
underneath the deedful word
of a blood red sun.
We know what made us pluck the flowers
and glimpse at faces in sideboard glass,
we all pay the debt at widow's wakes
that weep before memorial brass,
with silence on what shone behind
in a garden's shallow brook,
a warping mirror of our dark door shall show,
some 140 years ago.
