Daniel Nathan Terry

Cathedral of Night

I. Clerestory

Candles and cook-fires gild the faces of soldiers—

each platoon a nativity adoring this swaddle of holy light,

each man a saint receiving scripture.

And here is a scene worthy of high windows—

beneath the vaulted sky coffered with stars

a nurse bends low over a legless boy,

by lantern her stained cap gold as a miter. And yet

we cannot collect these nocturnal icons

on the collodion-plate. Silver nitrate dries too quickly

for the low lights of man, vanishes too swiftly

for the waxing moon. As sure as day

is our ally, night renders us powerless—

returns us to the primitive, keeps her mysteries,

will not be out-reasoned. Even with Gardner’s

advancements, darkness blinds the camera’s

cycloptic eye.

II. Scriptorium

Bayonets—detached from rifles

and driven into the belly

of the Pennsylvanian soil—hold candles.

The literate compose letters to wives, mothers,

or promised ones by the light of these

lethal votives. The unschooled

dictate stories, oaths to return, deceptions meant

to comfort, laundry lists intended to distract

the imagination of their readers. There are so many

whispering soldiers the camps become choirs.

There are so many candles burning,

the hills become altars—smoking tallow

mingles with the sweet-almond scent

of gangrenous wounds. Strange incense

acrid enough to rouse the derelict

angels.

III. Reliquary

Seeking a memento, I search the living

dark, pass down an ambulatory

of sound—purrs low and soft,

snores, rattles, breath snagged

in half-consumptive lungs. The occasional

night scream. Finally I come to

the image I would take—my soldier is no more

than eighteen, but so weary my footfalls

do not wake him. I want to remember

his face luminesced, his head resting

on an empty haversack, his body retreating

into itself. If I were a rebel, he would die now

without waking, without fear, with his dreams

preserved and protected—hearth and home,

the turn of a lady’s throat, a roasted shank,

the plump curve of a whore’s thigh, the plunge

of his saber into the gut of a Confederate. God knows

what these young men see

when they close their eyes. The moon lies,

shows them all as innocents, unsullied as marble

saints. But at dawn they will rise, become again

the Army of the Potomac.