The Veteran in a New Field
Natasha Trethewey’s poem “Again, The Fields” responds to Winslow Homer’s post-Civil War painting The Veteran in a New Field.
AGAIN, THE FIELDS
AFTER WINSLOW HOMER
the dead they lay long the lines like sheaves of Wheat I could have walked on the boddes all most from one end too the other
No more muskets, the bone-drag
weariness of marching, the trampled
grass, soaked earth red as the wine
of sacrament. Now, the veteran
turns toward a new field, bright
as domes of the republic. Here,
he has shrugged off the past—his jacket
and canteen flung down in the corner.
At the center of the painting, he anchors
the trinity, joining earth and sky.
The wheat falls beneath his scythe--
a language of bounty—the swaths
like scripture on the field’s open page.
Boundless, the wheat stretches beyond
the frame, as if toward a distant field--
the white canvas where sky and cotton
meet, where another veteran toils,
his hands the color of dark soil.
Read Trethewey's poem "South."
AGAIN, THE FIELDS
AFTER WINSLOW HOMER
the dead they lay long the lines like sheaves of Wheat I could have walked on the boddes all most from one end too the other
No more muskets, the bone-drag
weariness of marching, the trampled
grass, soaked earth red as the wine
of sacrament. Now, the veteran
turns toward a new field, bright
as domes of the republic. Here,
he has shrugged off the past—his jacket
and canteen flung down in the corner.
At the center of the painting, he anchors
the trinity, joining earth and sky.
The wheat falls beneath his scythe--
a language of bounty—the swaths
like scripture on the field’s open page.
Boundless, the wheat stretches beyond
the frame, as if toward a distant field--
the white canvas where sky and cotton
meet, where another veteran toils,
his hands the color of dark soil.
Read Trethewey's poem "South."
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