A Dream of a Distant Battle

Water runs and sometimes it gallops, up here in the Pacific Northwest. So too the mind, when trails appear link by link, be they followed or built. Don't know how I got to this interview with Bob Dylan but get there I did. Mr. Dylan talks for a bit about the Southern United States, and the battle for Shiloh, Tennessee which took place on April 6th & 7th, 1862. The war was just a baby, and after those two days of pitched and chaotic battle the country was bathed in a new kind of blood. What remained in the creeks and the hollows are what catch Mr. Dylan, who spoke of the "Southern air" in the interview:

It’s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They’re all screaming and forlorning. It’s like they are caught in some weird web - some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can’t rest. They can’t live, and they can’t die. It’s like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It’s all over the place. There are war fields everywhere … a lot of times even in people’s backyards.

And so Dylan rides on this different plane, where music is both of the heavens and of the vapors rising from the earth. He remains the genius of America's ghostly self.

Reading the brief Dylan interview led me to looking up the Battle of Shiloh, and Google did the rest. One thing I learned by following those links was that Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston took a stray bullet to the back of his right knee. From there:

As he didn't think of the wound as serious at first, he allowed his personal surgeon to continue to care for wounded Union prisoners. The bullet had, in fact, hit an artery, the popliteal artery, and he was quickly losing blood. When some of his soldiers, who he was personally directing and rallying on the front lines, noticed he was very pale and almost falling off of his horse they asked him if he was injured and he replied, "Yes, and I fear seriously." He was carried to a small ravine, where he died quickly. This left only his second in command, General Beauregard, in charge against the greatest Union general.

A wounded Johnston, perhaps not fully understanding the gravity of his wound "...allowed his personal surgeon to continue to care for wounded Union prisoners." Would he have ordered his doctor differently, had he comprehended better his situation? I do not know, but I prefer to suspect there was something in him that saw past the personal all the way to the profound. And so, in ways large and small, on this side or that, human beings commit acts of selflessness and compassion not for glory or gain, but because it is the right thing to do...or so I contend.

So now, recollecting that water that runs where it will and links will lead where they may, I offer the following lyrics to a deceased General, who fought for a cause I can never support, but was never in a position where I had to. But so be it: for this day, the sixth of April, 2009, one hundred and forty-seven years after the day that he perished, General Albert Sidney Johnston is in my heart, and also in this song.

I KNOW THE NIGHT IS COMING

the rain has made a mess of things
i cannot see the road
far ahead is filled with dread
it's gray and bitter cold

a shot of light beneath the trees
a single ray of sun
my men, they laid me on the land
oh, god, thy will is done
oh, god, thy will is done

(chorus)
i know the night is coming
with my love so far away
i know the night will cover all
at the end of this hard day
i know the night is filled most up
with stars and northern light
i hope to travel in its dreams
to kiss my girl good night
to kiss my girl good night

i buckled when i took the hit
i held tightly to my horse
the prisoners needed doctors
while the drums beat for the war

i started falling out of sorts
they laid me on the ground
behind them was eternity
it didn't make a sound

i know that angels fly with wings
forged by the flights of men
i would like it most to fly away
and see my wife again

(chorus)
i know the night is coming
with my love so far away
i know the night will cover all
at the end of this hard day
i know the night is filled most up
with stars and northern light
i hope to travel in its dreams
to kiss my girl good night
to kiss my girl good night

(chanted)
a shot of light beneath the trees
a single ray of sun
my men, they laid me on the land
oh, god, thy will is done
oh, god, thy will is done

++++