Night Vision
after Käthe Kollwitz, preliminary sketch for Schlacterfeld / Battlefield,
sheet 6, Bauernkrieg / Peasant War, etching, 1903
It’s their first night dead,
ripening where they dropped
across crop rows of rye.
You sketch their bodies
with black crayon
on a common stock of paper.
Your uncommon eye, Käthe,
searches the slaughter field
for the tell of defeat.
A shawled woman’s hand,
her head’s increased
weight as it sags
over the dim lantern
to examine the face
she held dear
when it was lit
by more than a candle
housed in smudged glass.
This, the instant
you look for.
The plunge
into recognition.
The flame, and the flame
snuffed out.
J.C. Todd’s recent books include What Kept Me Awake?/ Kas neleido užmigti (PDR, 2024), a bilingual (English-Lithuanian) new and selected, and Beyond Repair (Able Muse Press, 2021). Poems and interviews have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. Fellowships include those from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Leeway Foundation, as well as national and international artist residency programs. She is a co-editor of Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War (Scarlet Tanager Books, forthcoming 2026). For additional information, visit www.jc-todd.com.
