Walt Whitman Tends to the Wounded

Lately I've been wrestling with that inner turmoil common among American patriots who wish for an end to war, political violence, and empire. That means it's time to take that dusty copy of poetry by Walt Whitman out of the library and give it a hard read by lantern light.

Home for the holidays with my father, I've endured yet another round of television news shows in which all of the speakers assume that only retaliatory, strategic, or pre-emptive violence can stop the Taliban, al Qaeda, or Hamas.

As a progressive, peace and democracy-loving American, I oppose the political goals of those three groups with every ounce of my being, and yet it seems that our leaders have put off pre-emptive peace, peacebuilding, overtures to the moderates instead for major combat operations, missile strikes, and drones.

True, the use of military might is tragic. But at the same time, wouldn't immediate withdrawal allow those groups to flourish at the cost of women's rights, democracy, and public health, if not more large-scale terror attacks?

Perhaps this is only an ounce of what the poet Walt Whitman felt during the American Civil War. As a forty-something urban Bohemian from New Jersey who grew up partly in New Orleans, and as a volunteer with wounded soldiers, Whitman had the honor of chronicling much of the collective trauma of the civil war through his poetry.

Though he hated war and violence, he could not deny his commitment to the ideals held by Lincoln and the northern states, to preserve the Union, abolish slavery, and reform civil rights. To make matters more complicated, he was sometimes scorned for being a poet. Some did not believe his work should be highlighted as he broke many traditions in not only poetry, but also in his treatment of love between men.

In The Wound-Dresser, he produced some of the most vivid and emotionally raw portraits of nurses and wounded soldiers. "Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, Straight to my wounded I go..." and "With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, One turns to me his appealing eyes -- poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you."

He may have even suffered a kind of vicarious post-traumatic stress as he wrote in Old War-Dreams, "Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,) Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide, I dream, I dream, I dream..." The Artilleryman's Vision evokes the sounds and heartbreak with even more detail.

If you're feeling conflicted by the wars on our horizon, troubled about how to embrace soldiers returning from the front, or having dreams about what you've seen, maybe it's time to wake up the old poets.

Photo: A newly-identified teenage soldier is transferred from Maryland's Antietam Battlefield Unknown Soldier Memorial to a New York grave, Maryland National Guard.