First Excerpt

SCENE: In the Confederate camp. Bed rolls and equipment lie around. A few ragged men, many with dirty bandages over wounds still unhealed after Chancellorsville, sit or half-lie about cleaning guns, smoking or chewing tobacco, talking.

                                                    WARREN
I tell you, I don’t know. This brittle air
Has broken glassily around him, infecting
His spirit with its tumors. He sits there,
Mutt’ring to a devil in his brain,
Asking neither talk nor salve from us.
                                                    SOLDIER
We can try. Fred: Boy, why leave your friends
And sit there moping? Help us plow those fields
In thought, that lie out naked in the sun
At home, for want of shoulders now holding guns.
He won’t answer.
                                                    WARREN
We must go to him.
Fred’rick, we’ve seen blood and screams and dying,
Horses trampling men, and gone ones writhing,
Just about all one would see in war, if given
No more lifetimes than the usual.
You and I, we’ve seen these things, and somehow
Before, always, it seems that we could talk.
Tell us. And know that never did a prison
Hold its captured freight more closely than
These hearts will clasp whatever secrets boil
In yours, if closeness and the dumb air
Are all the list’ners you desire. Come, Fred.
                                                    FRED
It isn’t war. Or not the war you speak of there.
This thing has grafted its bad flesh to mine
Since long before we saw these things. It’s time
Or fate, or some such word I cannot understand
That brings these dark spots in to twist
A knife too deep in a man to even find.
                                                    WARREN
I know. Or think I know. Talk on.
                                                    FRED
I’ll never see him! You understand? Warren,
Never will that face sit laughing alive
In my vision again. Why? It’s so stupid.
                                                    WARREN
My friend, I’m groping far away from the center
Of this trouble. Who is it you’ll never
See alive? Some friend we never knew,
You never told us of, too dear to handle
With blunt words, where men are killing, torturing,
And taking blood from their brother’s split veins?
                                                    FRED
Leave that word alone! You cannot know
What its two small syllables can carry of pain
And sinking out of all that liquid bubbling
Fools call life. Men use it loosely here,
Not feeling all the bayonets from Hell
That focus to prod, when one does know its meaning.
                                                    WARREN
Brother?
                                                    FRED
You have the knife, Now stab as the devil desires.
                                                    WARREN
The good God forbid.
                                                    FRED
Ask.
                                                    WARREN
I will. You’ve a brother dead?
                                                    FRED
It’s worse than death. He fights for them.

Second Excerpt

SCENE: Three miles west of Gettysburg. LEE has ridden up and dismounted, stands surveying the situation with his glasses. Noise of cannon and infantry fire.

                                                    LEE
What unseen hands are these that guide men’s fate?
No man stepped up to say, “This day we’ll fight.”
No earthly creature planted fist between
These hills, demanding battle noise, and yet
The colored lines of war sweep down to pour
Their blood and smoke to make a grim confusion.
Over that long ridge behind them lies
A town, a gentle knot tied up of roads
That point out circle-wise. Is this flame-spouting
Line against us just a part of their armor
Left to guard such piece of land-intrigue,
Or has their entire force come rumbling here
To stand a little dented by my third?

(Enter MESSENGER)

Well, Sir? How came this beating of the hills?
                                                     MESSENGER
Gen’ral Lee, Sir. Commander Hill has seen you
Through his glasses, sends me here to tell
Why this has happened, and to find your vision,
Since, he says, you see beyond all men.
                                                     LEE
Now I see but smoke and thund’ring. How was it?
                                                     MESSENGER
Yesterday we sat at Cashtown, near here,
Sending Pettigrew with his brigade
Toward Gettysburg because the army marched
Without the shoes men need for mere hard comfort.
Then this morning, two brigades, these diff’rent,
Set out mod’rately, and while the sun
Was struggling higher, six hills opened up,
Pouring blasts of night to smother men’s souls.
                                                    LEE
We cannot know, in this blind fumbling, what
Those people throw against us. As now
It stands, the sun would have no smile
For rashness. Tell your general to wait.
I have an army stalking up behind us.

(MESSENGER starts to leave. LEE looks through his glasses.)

Stop. The sun has eyes that could twinkle yet.
There’s something rustling north of that quiet town.
Yes. Strongly twinkling. Uniforms of gray
Are rising from the ground and trees to flow
Down to this battle river. I think it’s Rodes
Of Ewell’s force, whom I directed southward
To meet here for a mutual joining. Skies
Are speaking strangely with these hills. Troops
Come pouring in as if some beings more
Than human cast a pair of stormy dice
Whose numbers point to giant human clashing.
                                                     MESSENGER
It seems there’s something jumping up to meet them.
                                                    LEE
Yes. By all the hearts that spark for battle!
Somewhere in this earth are hidden bowels
Turning loose a crowd of men each time
Unevenness brings on a vacuum. That town
Has opened, letting blue guns cry out northward.

(Enter General HETH, HILL’S division commander)

Gen’ral Heth, Sir. Someone’s set the stars
To fighting.

First Excerpt | Second Excerpt

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