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An Ekphrastic Poem by Natasha Trethewey

6/5/2013

1 Comment

 
Picture
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."
1 Comment
Kaleb link
5/8/2019 10:35:32 pm

What a lovely poem, thanks for sharing.

Reply



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