We’re Almost Home

a Poem of the Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864
 

by Daniel Mallock (February 2018)

The Green Hill, Winslow Homer, 1878

 

Such a sight I never saw and can never expect to see again . . . You could have walked all over the field upon dead bodies without stepping upon the ground . . . It was a wonder that any man escaped alive . . . I never saw anything like that field, and never want to again.—Confederate Corps Commander Major General Frank Cheatham in a post war interview.

                                                                                                                 

Cool Springs’ and Franklin’s office blocks

Are lit up at night, waiting

 

Beyond time, troops marched close

And came so close to home

 

Down Winstead Hill—straight lines,

Banners, bayonets, bitter hopes.

 

Rabbits rush ahead into blue

Lines steeled, awed, waiting.

 

Cool winter breeze moves flags,

All dream of home, love, life—

 

Night shadows move across Franklin

So calm, grand, almost home;

 

Blue and gray in the night light fire

Turning hot and cold and red;

 

Cannon, sword, lurid shriek,

Guns with sharp shrill flames

 

Last, and first prayers to God to

Mother father somewhere close and

 

Away, far from Franklin’s red fields

Where hare are alive.

 

At the works they die in straight lines,

On the top Adams’ horse

 

Like a monument; at the base

Are the dead.

 

Behind the works children scream,

From their cellars see hell

 

Hear it, smell it, are shattered,

Wounded, haunted forever.

 

They lay for days on Franklin’s

Winter fields close to home;

 

They lie in straight lines in Franklin

Ground, the lost in trenches—

 

In Cool Springs’ morning

Old wars and dead heroes;

 

At Franklin dawn is there

in dim light-almost home now

 

Wind moves the barren trees

Like flags on Franklin’s fields.

 

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Daniel Mallock is a historian of the Founding generation and of the Civil War and is the author of Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and a World of Revolution. He is a Contributing Editor at New English Review.
 

More by Daniel Mallock.

 

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