James Dickey: The Selected Poems

Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewill Creek

HUNTING CIVIL WAR RELICSATNIMBLEWILL CREEK As he moves the mine detector A few inches over the ground, Making it vitally Hoat Among the ferns and weeds, I come into this war Slowly, with my one brother, Watching his face grow deep Between the earphones, For I can tell Ifwe enter the buried battle OfNimblewill Only by his expression. Softly he wanders, parting The grass with a dreaming hand. No dead cry yet takes root In his clapped ears Or can be seen in his smile. But underfoot I feel The dead regroup, The burst metals all in place, The battle lines be drawn Anew to include us In Nimblewill, And I carry the shovel and pick More as ifthey were Bright weapons that I bore. A bird's cry breaks In two, and into three parts. We cross the creek; the cry Shifts into another, Nearer, bird, and is Like the shout ofashadow-Drowning with Others 35 Lived-with, appallingly closeOr the soul, pronouncing "Nimblewill": Three tones; your being changes. We climb the bank; A faint light glows On my brother's mouth. I listen, as two birds fight For a single voice, but he Must be hearing the grave, In pieces, all singing To his clamped head, For he smiles as if He rose from the dead within Green Nimblewill And stood in his grandson's shape. No shot from the buried war Shall kill me now, For the dead have waited here A hundred years to create Only the look on the face Of my one brother, Who stands among them, offering A metal dish Afloat in the trembling weeds, With a long-buried light on his lips At Nimblewill And the dead outsinging two birds. I choke the handle Ofthe pick, and fall to my knees To dig wherever he points, To bring up mess tin or bullet, To go underground Still singing, myself, Without a sound, Like a man who renounces war, Or one who shall lift up the past, Not breathing "Father," At Nimblewill, But saying, "Fathers! Fathers!" Drowning with Others 37 This page intentionally left blank ...