Читать книгу Empires - John Balaban - Страница 9

CHRISTMAS EYE AT WASHINGTON’S CROSSING

Omnia reliquit servare rempublicam

Society of the Cincinnati

Out on the freezing Delaware, ice sheets bob the surface, breaking

against granite pilings of the colonial river inn swept by winter storm.

Gusts of snow blow off a sandbar and sink in plunging currents

where a line of ducks paddles hard against the blizzard

as cornfields on the Jersey banks are whisked into bits

of stalks and broken sheaves spinning in the squalls.

This is where, one such Christmas night, the tall courtly general with bad teeth

risked his neck and his rebels to cross the storming river and rout the Hessians.

*

What made them think they could succeed? … farmers mostly,

leaving homesteads to load cannon into Durham boats

to row into the snowstorm, then march all night to Trenton,

saving the Republic for Valley Forge and victory at Yorktown.

Before crossing, legend says, they assembled in the snow to hear

Paine’s new essay about summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.

What words could call us all together now? On what riverbank?

For what common good would we abandon all?