A Sight in Camp

A SIGHT in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital
tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended
lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.

Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just
lift the blanket;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd
hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?

Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and
darling?
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?

Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face
of the Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

Walt Whitman, "A Sight in Camp..." Drum Taps 1865

"Drum-Taps" is a sequence of 43 poems about the Civil War, and stands as the finest war poetry written by an American. In these poems Whitman presents, often in innovative ways, his emotional experience of the Civil War. The sequence as a whole traces Whitman's varying responses, from initial excitement (and doubt), to direct observation, to a deep compassionate involvement with the casualties of the armed conflict. The mood of the poems varies dramatically, from excitement to woe, from distant observation to engagement, from belief to resignation. Written ten years after "Song of Myself," these poems are more concerned with history than the self, more aware of the precariousness of America's present and future than of its expansive promise. In "Drum-Taps" Whitman projects himself as a mature poet, directly touched by human suffering, in clear distinction to the ecstatic, naive, electric voice which marked the original edition of Leaves of Grass.

Text Source: Huck Gutman, "Drum Taps" Whitman Archive

Death Close-walking Beside Me

So, why a blog whose sole purpose is to reflect upon death? To paraphrase the Book of Common Prayer as it refers to the sacraments, it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual conversation that I have been having more or less continually as long as I can remember. Why not make that inner dialogue public, explore it more fully, and plumb the depths of what lessons death is seeking to impart?

Is this a morbid obsession, as my blog name suggests? In some sense it is. Undeniably, I have a dark fascination with death. But there's more. For me, as I suspect for many of us, death's mystery is intimately engaging and has an allure that is all but irresistible. It may even be that death impacts how I live my life now. Maybe.

In a recent interview, president of Harvard University and historian Drew Gilpin Faust, in speaking of mid-nineteenth century Americans' acute consciousness of death, noted: 'They believed that you focused your life more, you made its good qualities sharper, by always keeping in mind the fact that it would have an end. And so it was the anticipation of its limits that made the existence of your life all the more valuable."

As a clergyman and now, as a hospice chaplain, I encounter death often. I confess that this long exposure to death has not necessarily made me any the wiser. But neither do I deny death. With Walt Whitman in When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, I imagine death as a companion along the way:

Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of 

      me,

And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,

And I in the middle, as with companions, and as holding the

      hands of companions...

I cordially invite you to accompany me on this journey of exploration and discovery.

(Photo Credit: from James Smillie's Mount Auburn Illustrated in Finely Drawn Line Engravings)