The Turning of the Cannon

Then Armistead fell too . . . as he reached with his free hand for the muzzle of one of the guns.

—Shelby Foote

They gleam there wheel to wheel on that last ridge Beyond which lie the valleys of our birth From whence we have been driven field by field Leaving dead kin to hold our native earth. And yet like shades dissolving dark in dawn Those people seem as abstract as their maps That simplify our tale to their idea— This barn we built, that chapel where we wed, Each family plot railed off by spike and yew— Just dots or patches hatched, not real and true.

Now fault lines cross and part on common ground— Matter made absolute in chattel slaves Chained to the land or urban sleights of hand That pay in scrip of sophistry and debt— But in the heat of battle such cold facts Are lost in fumes, confusion, civil war, Though not on us, hunkered in great live oaks Whose limbs in wind conduct night's silent fires, Old monotones of star-scored earth and sky, Grand anthems of the essence and the bone.

And though these stately measures fade away When shot tears hot through smoke that will not clear, And we are cast as cast-out demons in Abhorrent allegories of our foe, We'll charge once more their shifting lines and guns

With bayonet and clan-yell fixed, then raised, Our muzzleloaders picking off whole crews That man those massed Napoleons; we'll turn To drive them one fine April from the ridge That slopes toward the Old Republic's Washington.