Robin Kirk

COLD HARBOR, 1997

Grant would not relent. Across
the gentle pastures he marched
again and again and again.

He lost. The fallen stayed
at Cold Harbor, ignorant
of their ultimate victory.

Would that they had known!
It was the last defeat and,
for that, the cruelest.

The Butcher Grant, the drunk,
he was called. Who wouldn't drink
with so battered an army?

Once again pasture, once again
a living place, only the mud trenches
show how desperate was the hour.

Who has not lost, and lost heart?
Victory is a silent traveler,
veiled to the sharpest eye.

In the closeness of the pines,
nothing is clear. There are
angles and densities, turns

that the mind takes, without
warning. Yet who can say
that victory does not creep close

in their slim shadows, by the
dogwood blossoms, as breath
soft as January rain.

Robin Kirk is a writer and human rights activist. She directs the Human Rights Center at Duke University, where she teaches. She lives in Durham, NC with her two children.