Crossed on the ferry at Tsukinowa to the post town of Se-no-ue to see the ruins that were Sato Shoji’s house, beyond town to the left, near the mountains. We were told to look at Saba Moor in Iizuka, and we eventually came to Maru Hill where the castle ruins lay. Seeing the main gate sundered, the ancient temple nearby, seeing all the family graves, my eyes glazed with tears…
Sword, chest and wind-carp
all proudly displayed
on Boys’ Festival Day
Basho, “Narrow Road to the Interior,” translated by Sam Hamil, The Essential Basho, pg. 11-12
Witnessing Gettysburg
You come upon site after site along the battlefield. Devil’s Den. The Wheat Field. The Peach Orchard. The woods where the Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine held the line with fixed bayonets. How can you wrap your mind around the carnage?
You see the Monument to the fallen, the Eternal Flame, and the cemetary where Abraham Lincoln gave his brief remarks–the Gettysburg Address.
How can your eyes remain dry?
Picket’s charge
blood-soaked ground succeeded
by summer grass
for dverse Poets’ Meet the Bar by changing your perspective (pubtended by Bjorn)
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Frank J. Tassone 
This is good, Frank. Indeed, how can our eyes remain dry at the thought of the sacrifices that these brave men and women made for us?
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Indeed! Thanks, Vivian! 😀
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😊- my comment box is open now😊
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Some things never change.
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An excellent transposition from Basho to Stephen Crane. It is hard to grasp the enormity of lives lost. 10 years in the Middle East, we’ve lost 6,000 men and women. I think they lost that at Gettysburg alone.
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Indeed! Thanks, Glenn! 😀
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The blood will always be there. Well done. (K)
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Indeed! Thanks, K! 😀
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Will we ever understand how differences can lead to such loss?
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Who can say? Mysterium Iniquitatis–the mystery of evil, as Catholic tradition would say. Trapped in Samsara, as the Buddha would say. But we must have hope. And as long as there is Love, there is hope.
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Interesting mix of images. The first seems from your own perspective
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Thank you! 🙂
Out of curiosity, which images seem to be from my perspective? 😉
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I think the perspective of second person makes me take travelling alongside, seeing what you see.
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There seems to be a distance in this. Not the passage of time, something else…
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It’s impossible to go to Gettysburg and not write poetry.
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Indeed! Thank you 😀
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