Book + 

VIII + 

It is over now, but they will not let it be over. + 

It was over with John Brown when the sun rose up + 

To show him the town in arms and he did not flee, + 

Yet men were killed after that, before it was over, + 

And he did not die until November was cool + 

—Yellow leaves falling through a blue-grey dusk, + 

The first winds of November whirl and scatter them⁠— + 

So now, the Confederacy, + 

Sick with its mortal sickness, yet lives on + 

For twenty-one falling months of pride and despair, + 

Half-hopes blown out in the lighting, heroic strokes + 

That come to nothing, and death piled hard upon death. + 

Follow that agony if you must and can + 

By the brushwood names, by the bloody prints in the woods, + 

Cold Harbor and Spottsylvania and Yellow Tavern + 

And all the lost court-houses and country stores + 

In the Wilderness, where the bitter fighting passed, + 

(No fighting bitterer)⁠—follow the rabbit-runs + 

Through the tangled wilds where the hair of the wounded men + 

Caught fire from the burning trees, where they lay in the swamps + 

Like half-charred logs⁠—find the place they called “Hell’s Half Acre.” + 

Follow the Indian names in the Indian West, + 

Chickamauga and Chattanooga and all the words + 

That are sewn on flags or cut in an armory wall. + 

My cyclorama is not the shape of the world + 

Nor even the shape of this war from first to last, + 

But like a totem carved, like a totem stained + 

With certain beasts and skies and faces of men + 

That would not let me be too quiet at night + 

Till they were figured. + 

Therefore now, through the storm, + 

The war, the rumor, the grinding of the machine, + 

Let certain sounds, let certain voices be heard. + 

A Richmond lady sits in a Richmond square + 

Beside a working-girl. They talk of the war, + 

They talk of the food and the prices in low-pitched voices + 

With hunger fretting them both. Then they go their ways. + 

But, before she departs, the lady has asked a question⁠— + 

The working-girl pulls up the sleeve of her dress + 

And shows the lady the sorry bone of her arm. + 

Grant has come East to take up his last command + 

And the grand command of the armies. + 

It is five years + 

Since he sat, with a glass, by the stove in a country store, + 

A stumpy, mute man in a faded Army overcoat, + 

The eldest-born of the Grants but the family-failure, + 

Now, for a week, he shines in the full array + 

Of gold cord and black-feathered hat and superb blue coat, + 

As he talks with the trim, well-tailored Eastern men. + 

It is his only moment of such parade. + 

When the fighting starts, he is chewing a dead cigar + 

With only the battered stars to show the rank + 

On the shoulderstraps of the private’s uniform. + 

It is sullen Cold Harbor. The Union attack has failed, + 

Repulsed with a ghastly slaughter. The twilight falls. + 

The word goes round the attack will be made again + 

Though all know now that it cannot be made and win. + 

An anxious officer walks through his lines that night. + 

There has been no mutiny yet, throughout all these years, + 

But he wonders now. What are the men doing now? + 

He sees them there. They are silently writing their names + 

On bits of rag and sewing the scraps of cloth + 

To their jackets while they can, before the attack. + 

When they die, next morning, somebody may read the names. + 

Pickett’s son is born on a night of mid-July + 

While the two armies face each other, and Pickett’s men + 

Light bonfires of celebration along his lines. + 

The fire is seen from the tents of the other camp. + 

The news goes back to Grant and his chief of staff. + 

“Haven’t we any wood for the little Pickett?” says Grant, + 

And the Union bonfires are lighted for Pickett’s son. + 

—All night those two lines of brush-fire, facing each other⁠— + 

Next day they send the baby a silver service. + 

Next week or so they move upon Pickett’s works. + 

On a muddy river, little toy boats go out. + 

The soldiers are swapping coffee for rank tobacco, + 

A Northern badge for a Southern souvenir, + 

A piece of white-flour bread for a hunk of corn-pone. + 

A Northern lieutenant swims the river at night + 

To go to a Southern dance at a backwoods store, + 

Joke with the girls, swim back, and fight the next day + 

With his hosts of the night before. + 

On disputed ground, + 

A grey-clad private worms his way like a snake, + 

The Union sentries see him and start to fire. + 

“Aw, shut up, Yank,” he calls in a weary voice, + 

“I just skun out to salvage the chaplain’s hat, + 

It’s the only one he’s got and it just blew off.” + 

The firing stops. + 

“All right, Johnny,” the sentries call, + 

“Get your hat, but be quick about it. We won’t hurt you + 

But you better be back by the time our relief gets here.” + 

A Southern sharpshooter crouched in a blue-gum tree + 

Drills a tiny blue-coated figure between the eyes + 

With a pea-ball fired from a smooth-bore squirrel-rifle. + 

The dead man’s brother waits three days for his shot, + 

Then the sharpshooter crashes down through the breaking boughs + 

Like a lumpy bird, spread-eagled out of his nest. + 

The desolate siege of Petersburg begins. + 

The grain goes first, then the cats and the squeaking mice, + 

The thin cats stagger starving about the streets, + 

Die or are eaten. There are no more cats + 

In Petersburg⁠—and in Charleston the creeping grass + 

Grows over the wharves where the ships of the world came in. + 

The grass and the moss grow over the stones of the wharves. + 

A Georgia belle eats sherbet near Andersonville + 

Where the Union prisoners rot. Another is weeping + 

The death of her brother, killed in a Union raid. + 

In the North, the factory chimneys smoke and fume; + 

The minstrels have raised their prices, but every night + 

Bones and Tambo play to a crowded house. + 

The hotels are full. The German Opera is here. + 

The ladies at Newport drive in their four-in-hands. + 

The old woman sells her papers about the war. + 

The country widows stitch on a rusty black. + 

In the Shenandoah Valley, the millwheels rot. + 

(Sheridan has been there.) Where the houses stood, + 

Strong houses, built for weather, lasting it out, + 

The chimneys stand alone. The chimneys are blackened. + 

(Sheridan has been there.) This Valley has been + 

The granary of Lee’s army for years and years. + 

Sheridan makes his report on his finished work. + 

“If a crow intends to fly over the Valley now + 

He’ll have to carry his own provisions,” says Sheridan. + 

The lonely man with the chin like John Calhoun’s + 

Knows it is over, will not know it is over. + 

Many hands are turning against him in these last years. + 

He makes mistakes. He is stubborn and sick at heart. + 

He is inflexible with fate and men. + 

It is over. It cannot be. He fights to the end, + 

Clinging to one last dream⁠—of somehow, somewhere, + 

A last, miraculous battle where he can lead + 

One wing of the Southern army and Lee the other + 

And so wrench victory out of the failing odds. + 

Why is it a dream? He has studied grand strategy, + 

He was thought a competent soldier in Mexico, + 

He was Secretary of War once⁠— + 

He is the rigid + 

Scholar we know and have seen in another place, + 

Lacking that scholar’s largeness, but with the same + 

Tight mouth, the same intentness on one concept, + 

The same ideal that must bend all life to its will + 

Or break to pieces⁠—and that is the best of him. + 

The pettiness is the pettiness of a girl + 

More than a man’s⁠—a brilliant and shrewish girl, + 

Never too well in body yet living long. + 

He has that unforgiveness of women in him + 

And women will always know him better than men + 

Except for a few, in spite of Mexican wars, + 

In spite of this last, most desolate, warlike dream. + 

Give him the tasks that other scholar assumed, + 

He would not have borne them as greatly or with such skill, + 

And yet⁠—one can find a likeness. + 

So now he dreams + 

Hopelessly of a fight he will never fight + 

And if worst comes to worst, perhaps, of a last + 

Plutarch-death on a shield. + 

It is not to be. + 

He will snatch up a cloak of his wife’s by accident + 

In the moment before his capture, and so be seen, + 

The proud man turned into farce, into sorry farce + 

Before the ignorant gapers. + 

He shades his eyes + 

To rest them a moment, turns to his work again. + 

The gaunt man, Abraham Lincoln, lives his days. + 

For a while the sky above him is very dark. + 

There are fifty thousand dead in these last, bleak months + 

And Richmond is still untaken. + 

The papers rail, + 

Grant is a butcher, the war will never be done. + 

The gaunt man’s term of office draws to an end, + 

His best friends muse and are doubtful. He thinks himself + 

For a while that when the time of election comes + 

He will not be re-elected. He does not flinch. + 

He draws up a paper and seals it with his own hand. + 

His cabinet signs it, unread. + 

Such writing might be + 

A long historic excuse for defeated strength. + 

This is very short and strict with its commonsense. + 

“It seems we may not rule this nation again. + 

If so, we must do our best, while we still have time, + 

To plan with the new rulers who are to come + 

How best to save the Union before they come, + 

For they will have been elected upon such grounds + 

That they cannot possibly save it, once in our place.” + 

The cloud lifts, after all. They bring him the news. + 

He is sure of being President four years more. + 

He thinks about it. He says, “Well, I guess they thought + 

They’d better not swap horses, crossing a stream.” + 

The deserters begin to leave the Confederate armies.⁠ ⁠… + 

Luke Breckinridge woke up one sunshiny morning + 

Alone, in a roadside ditch, to be hungry again, + 

Though he was used to being hungry by now. + 

He looked at his rifle and thought, “Well, I ought to clean it.” + 

He looked at his feet and he thought, “Well, I ought to get + 

Another bunch of rags if we-uns is goin’ + 

To march much more⁠—these rags is down to my hide.” + 

He looked at his ribs through the tears in his dirty shirt + 

And he thought, “Well, I sure am thin as a razorback. + 

Well, that’s the way it is. Well, I ought to do somethin’. + 

I ought to catch up with the boys. I wish I remembered + 

When I had to quit marchin’ last night. Well, if I start now, + 

I reckon I’m bound to catch ’em.” + 

But when he rose + 

He looked at the road and saw where the march had passed + 

—Feet going on through the dust and the sallow mud, + 

Feet going on forever⁠— + 

He saw that track. + 

He was suddenly very tired. + 

He had been tired after fighting often enough + 

But this was another weariness. + 

He rubbed his head in his hands for a minute or so, + 

As if to rub some slow thought out of his mind + 

But it would not be rubbed away. + 

“I’m near it,” he thought, + 

“The hotel ain’t a mile from here if Sophy’s still there. + 

Well, they wouldn’t give me a furlough when I ast. + 

Well, it’s been a long time.” + 

On the way to the plank hotel + 

He still kept mumbling, “I can catch up to the boys.” + 

But another thought too vague to be called a thought + 

Washed over the mumble, drowning it, forcing it down. + 

The grey front door was open. No one was there. + 

He stood for a moment silent, watching the sun + 

Fall through the open door and pool in the dust. + 

“Sophy!” he called. He waited. Then he went in. + 

The flies were buzzing over the dirty plates + 

In the dining room and nobody there at all. + 

It made him feel tired. He started to climb the stairs. + 

“Hey, Sophy!” he called and listened. There was a creak + 

From somewhere, a little noise like a dusty rat + 

Running across a dusty, sun-splattered board. + 

His hands felt stronger. + 

He was on the second floor + 

Slamming the doors of empty room after room + 

And calling “Sophy!” At last he found the locked door. + 

He broke it down with his shoulder in a loud noise. + 

She was lying in bed with the covers up to her chin + 

And her thin hands clutching the covers. + 

“Well, Soph,” he said. + 

“Well, it’s you,” she said. + 

They stared at each other awhile. + 

“The rest of ’em’s gone,” she said. “They went off last night. + 

We haven’t had no business. The nigger said + 

The Yanks were coming. They didn’t have room in the cart. + 

They said I could stay for a while and take care of things + 

Or walk if I wanted. I guess Mr. Pollet’s crazy. + 

He was talking things to himself all the time they went. + 

I never slept in a bed like this before. + 

I didn’t know you could sleep so soft in a bed.” + 

“Did they leave any shoes?” said Luke. + 

She shook her head. + 

“I reckon you could maybe tear up a quilt. + 

I reckon they wouldn’t mind.” + 

Luke grinned like a wolf. + 

“I reckon they hadn’t better,” he said. “Not much. + 

Got anything to eat? I’m hungry as hell.” + 

They ate what food she could find and she washed his feet + 

And bound them up in fresh rags. + 

He looked at the rags. + 

“Do for a while,” he said. “Well, come along, Soph. + 

We got a long way to go.” + 

Her eyes were big at him. + 

“The Yanks were comin’,” she said. “You mean the war’s over?” + 

He said, “I ain’t had shoes for God knows how long.” + 

He said, “If it was all Kelceys, you wouldn’t mind. + 

Now I’m goin’ to get me some shoes and raise me a crop, + 

And when we get back home, we’ll butcher a hog. + 

There’s allus hogs in the mountains.” + 

“Well,” she said. + 

“Well, you get your duds,” he said. + 

She didn’t have much. + 

They went along two days without being stopped. + 

She walked pretty well for a thin sort of girl like that. + 

He told her she’d get fatter when they were home. + 

The third day, they were tramping along toward dusk, + 

On a lonely stretch of road, when she heard the horse-hoofs. + 

Luke had heard them before and shifted his rifle then. + 

The officer came in sight. He was young and drawn. + 

His eyes were old in their sockets. He reined his horse. + 

“You’re goin’ the wrong way, soldier. What’s your regiment?” + 

Luke’s eyes grew little. “⁠⸺⁠th Virginia,” he drawled, + 

“But I’m on furlough.” + 

“H’m,” said the officer, + 

“Where are your furlough-papers?” + 

Luke’s hand slid down + 

By his trigger guard. “This here’s my furlough,” he said, + 

Resting the piece in the palm of the other hand. + 

The officer seemed to debate a thing in his mind + 

For a long instant. Then he rode on, in silence. + 

Luke watched him out of sight. When he was quite gone, + 

The hand slid back, the rifle was shouldered again. + 

The night had fallen on the narrow tent. + 

—Deep night of Virginia summer when the stars + 

Are burning wax in the near, languid sky + 

And the soft flowers hardly close all night + 

But bathe in darkness, as a woman bathes + 

In a warm, fragrant water and distill + 

Their perfume still, without the fire of the sun. + 

The army was asleep as armies sleep. + 

War lying on a casual sheaf of peace + 

For a brief moment, and yet with armor on, + 

And yet in the child’s deep sleep, and yet so still. + 

Even the sentries seemed to walk their posts + 

With a ghost-footfall that could match that night. + 

The aide-de-camp knew certain lines of Greek + 

And other such unnecessary things + 

As birds and music, that are good for peace + 

But are not deemed so serviceable for war. + 

He was a youth with an inquisitive mind + 

And doubtless had a failing for romance, + 

But then he was not twenty, and such faults + 

May sometimes be excused in younger men + 

Even when such creatures die, as they have done + 

At one time or another, for some cause + 

Which we are careful to point out to them + 

Much later, was no cause worth dying for, + 

But cannot reach them with our arguments + 

Because they are uneconomic dust. + 

So, when the aide-de-camp came toward the tent, + 

He knew that he was sleepy as a dog, + 

And yet the starlight and the gathered scents + 

Moved in his heart⁠—like the unnecessary + 

Themes of a music fallen from a cloud + 

In light, upon a dark water. + 

And though he had + 

Some bitterness of mind to chew upon, + 

As well as messages that he must give + 

Before he slept, he halted in his tracks. + 

He saw, imprinted on the yellow light + 

That made the tent a hollow jack-o’-lantern, + 

The sharp, black shadow of a seated man, + 

The profile like the profile on a bust. + 

Lee in his tent, alone. + 

He had some shadow-papers in his hand, + 

But you could see he was not reading them, + 

And, if he thought, you could not read his thoughts, + 

Even as shadows, by any light that shines. + 

“You’d know that face among a million faces,” + 

Thought the still watcher, “and yet, his hair and beard + 

Have quite turned white, white as the dogwood-bloom + 

That blossomed on the way to Chancellorsville + 

When Jackson was alive and we were young + 

And we were winning and the end was near. + 

And now, I guess, the end is near enough + 

In spite of everything that we can do, + 

And he’s alone tonight and Jackson’s dead. + 

I saw him in the Wilderness that day + 

When he began to lead the charge himself + 

And the men wouldn’t let him. + 

Gordon spoke + 

And then the men themselves began to yell + 

“Lee to the rear⁠—General Lee to the rear!” + 

I’ll hear that all my life. I’ll see those paws + 

Grabbing at Traveller and the bridle-rein + 

And forcing the calm image back from death. + 

Reckon that’s what we think of you, Marse Robert, + 

Reckon that’s what we think, what’s left of us, + 

The poor old devils that are left of us. + 

I wonder what he thinks about it all. + 

He isn’t staring, he’s just sitting there. + 

I never knew a man could look so still + 

And yet look so alive in his repose. + 

It doesn’t seem as if a cause could lose + 

When it’s believed in by a man like that. + 

And yet we’re losing. + 

And he knows it all. + 

No, he won’t ever say it. But he knows. + 

I’d feel more comfortable if he’d move. + 

We had a chance at Spottsylvania, + 

We had some chances in the Wilderness. + 

We always hurt them more than we were hurt + 

And yet we’re here⁠—and they keep coming on. + 

What keeps us going on? I wish I knew. + 

Perhaps you see a man like that go on + 

And then you have to follow. + 

There can’t be + 

So many men that men have followed so. + 

And yet, what is it for? What is it for? + 

What does he think? + 

His hands are lying there + 

Quiet as stones or shadows in his lap. + 

His beard is whiter than the dogwood bloom, + 

But there is nothing ruined in his face, + 

And nothing beaten in those steady eyes. + 

If he’s grown old, it isn’t like a man, + 

It’s more the way a river might grow old. + 

My mother knew him at old dances once. + 

She said he liked to joke and he was dark then, + 

Dark and as straight as he can stand today. + 

If he would only move, I could go forward. + 

You see the faces of spear-handling kings + 

In the old books they taught us from at school; + 

Big Agamemnon with his curly beard, + 

Achilles in the cruelty of his youth, + 

And Oedipus before he tore his eyes. + 

I’d like to see him in that chariot-rank, + 

With Traveller pulling at the leader-pole. + 

I don’t think when the winged claws come down + 

They’ll get a groan from him. + 

So we go on. + 

Under the claws. And he goes on ahead. + 

The sharp-cut profile moved a fraction now, + 

The aide-de-camp went forward on his errand. + 

The years ride out from the world like couriers gone to a throne + 

That is too far for treaty, or, as it may be, too proud; + 

The years marked with a star, the years that are skin and bone. + 

The years ride into the night like envoys sent to a cloud. + 

Perhaps they dismount at last, by some iron ring in the skies, + 

Dismount and tie their stallions and walk with an armored tread + 

Where an outlaw queen of the air receives strange embassies + 

Under a tree of wisdom, between the quick and the dead. + 

Perhaps they are merely gone, as the white foam flies from the bit, + 

But the sparkling noise of their riding is ever in our ears.⁠— + 

The men who came to the maze without foreknowledge of it, + 

The losers and the finders, under the riding years. + 

They pass, and the finders lose, the losers find for a space. + 

There are love and hate and delusion and all the tricks of the maze. + 

There are always losers and finders. There is no abiding-place + 

And the years are unreturning. But, here and there, there were days. + 

Days when the sun so shone that the statue gave its cry + 

And a bird shook wings or a woman walked with a certain mirth, + 

When the staff struck out a spring from the stones that had long been dry, + 

And the plough as before moved on from the hilltop, but its share had opened the earth. + 

So the bird is caught for an instant, and so the bird escapes. + 

The years are not halted by it. The losers and finders wait. + 

The years move on toward the sunset, the tall, far-trafficking shapes, + 

Each with a bag of news to lay at a ghostly gate. + 

Riders shaking the heart with the hoofs that will not cease, + 

Will you never lie stretched in marble, the hands crossed over the breast, + 

Some with hounds at your feet to show that you passed in peace, + 

And some with your feet on lions? + 

It is time that you were at rest. + 

John Vilas clucked to the scurvy rack of bones + 

Between the shafts. The rickety cart moved on + 

Like a tired insect, creaking through the dust. + 

There was another day behind them now + 

And any number of such days ahead + 

Unrolling like a long block-printed cloth + 

Pattered with field and stream and snake-rail fence, + 

And now and then, a flash of cavalry + 

Fording a backwoods creek; a big, slow star + 

Mounting in silver over lonely woods + 

While the fire smelled of pine and a cougar cried; + 

A warm barn, full of the sweet milky breath + 

Of cows; a lank-haired preacher on a mule; + 

A red-cheeked woman who rushed after them + 

Armed with a hot and smoking apple-pie + 

And would not take a penny from the old man + 

Who held the mended reins as if they were + 

The vast, slow-sweeping scythe of Time himself + 

—Old Time and the last children of his age, + 

Drawn in a rattling cart, too poor to thieve, + 

By a gaunt horse, too ancient to die, + 

Over a rutted road, day after day, + 

Returning to the East from whence he came. + 

It was a portent in the little towns. + 

The time had bred odd voyagers enough; + 

Disbanded soldiers, tramping toward the West + 

In faded army blouses, singing strange songs, + 

Heroes and chickenthieves, true men and liars, + 

Some with old wounds that galled them in the rains + 

And some who sold the wounds they never had + 

Seven times over in each new saloon; + 

Queer, rootless families, plucked up by war + 

To blow along the roads like tumbleweed, + 

Who fed their wild-haired children God knows how + 

But always kept a fierce and cringing cur, + 

Famished for scraps, to run below the cart; + 

Horsedealers, draft-evaders, gipsymen; + 

Crooked creatures of a thousand dubious trades + 

That breed like gnats from the debris of war; + 

Half-cracked herb-doctor, patent-medicine man + 

With his accordeon and his inked silk hat; + 

Sellers of snake-oil balm and lucky rings + 

And the old, crazy hatless wanderer + 

Who painted “God is Love” upon the barns + 

And on the rocks, “Prepare to Meet Thy God”; + 

Lost tribes and maverick nations of the road⁠— + 

The shiftless people, who are never still + 

But blow before the wind unquietly + 

And will so blow, until the last starved cur + 

Yaps at the last fat farmer, and lies down + 

With buckshot tearing at his ravening heart, + 

For the slow years to pick his carcass clean + 

And turn the little chapel of his bones + 

Into a dust so sifted by the wind + 

No winds that blow can sift it any more. + 

There were unquiet people on the road, + 

There were outlandish strays and travellers, + 

Drifting the little towns from day to day, + 

Stopping to mend a wheel or patch a shoe, + 

Beg, steal or sleep or write God’s judgments out + 

And then pass on. + 

And yet, when these three came, + 

John Vilas and his daughter and her child, + 

Like snail-drawn Time, along the dusty track, + 

The story had gone on ahead of them, + 

And there was something in the rickety cart + 

Or the gaunt horse or in his driver’s eyes + 

That made a fable of their journeying, + 

Until you heard John Vilas was that same + 

Lost Jew that wanders after every war + 

But cannot die in any, being curst. + 

He was the skipper, who first brought the slaves. + 

He was John Brown, arisen from his stone. + 

He was the drummer who had lost his way + 

At Valley Forge and frozen in the snow, + 

To rove forevermore, a dread old man + 

Beating a phantom drum across the wind. + 

He was a dozen such uncanny fetches, + 

And, while one must not talk with him too long, + 

There was no luck at all in crossing him, + 

Because, and in the end, the man was Time; + 

White-headed Time, stoop-shouldered on his scythe, + 

Driving a daughter and a daughter’s son + 

Beyond the war, to some wrought-iron gate + 

Where they would drop their heavy load at last + 

—Load of all war and all misfortune’s load⁠— + 

On the green grass of a New England grave + 

Set on the sea-cliffs, looking toward the sea. + 

While, for the other tale, the woman’s tale, + 

The heart-faced girl with the enormous eyes, + 

Roving from little town to little town + 

Still looking for her soldier⁠—it became + 

Mixed with each story of such fortune told + 

Behind drawn blinds, by women, in the dusk, + 

Until she too grew fabulous as a song + 

Sung to a beechwood fiddle, and all the old + 

Barely-recorded chants that are the land + 

And no one poet’s or musician’s⁠— + 

“Old Dan Tucker,” “The Belle of Albany,” + 

The girl who died for love in the high woods + 

And cruel Barbara Allen in her pride. + 

So she became a concertina tune + 

Played in plank taverns by a blind, old man, + 

A jew’s-harp strain, a comb-and-banjo song, + 

The music of a soapbox violin + 

Shrilled out against the tree-toads and the crickets + 

Through the hot nights of June. So, though she passed + 

Unknowing, yet she left the legend-touch + 

Bright as a splash of sumach still behind + 

Wherever the gaunt horse pulled on his load. + 

Till, later, those who knew no more of her + 

Living, than they might know of such removed + 

And singable creations as “Lord Randall,” + 

“Colombo,” “Little Musgrave,” or “Jay Gould’s Daughter,” + 

Yet knew enough of her to sing about + 

And fit her name, Melora, to the same + 

Slow-dropping minor of the water and earth⁠— + 

The minor of the country barber-shops + 

That keens above the grave of Jesse James + 

And the lone prairie where the cowboy died, + 

The desolate minor of the jail-bird’s song, + 

Luscious with sorrow, and the minor notes + 

That tell about the tragic end of such + 

As loved too well to have such cruel fathers + 

But were so loving, even in the dust, + 

A red-rose brier grew out of their dead hearts + 

And twined together in a lover’s knot + 

For all the county people to admire, + 

And every lost, waif ballad we have made + 

And, making, scorned because it smelt of the earth, + 

And now would seek, but cannot make again⁠— + 

So she became a legend and a name. + 

John Vilas, moving always toward the East, + 

Upon his last adventure, felt the sun + 

Strike at his bones and warm them like the last + 

Heat of the wood so long within the fire + 

That long ago the brightness ate its heart + 

And yet it lies and burns upon the iron + 

Unready still to crumble and be cool, + 

The white, transmuted log of purest ash + 

Still glowing with a late and borrowed flame. + 

“This is the sun of age,” he thought, “and so + 

We enter our last journeys with that sun + 

Which we have watched sink down ten thousand times + 

Knowing he would arise like Dedalus + 

On the first wings of morning, and exult + 

Like our own youth, fresh-risen from its bed + 

And inexhaustible of space and light. + 

But now the vessel which could not be filled + 

By violence or desire or the great storm, + 

Runs over with its weight of little days + 

And when this sun sinks now, we’ll sink with him + 

And not get up again. + 

I find it fit + 

That I, who spent the years of my desire + 

In the lost forest, seeking the lost stone, + 

With little care for Harriet or the rest, + 

With little trust in safety or the world, + 

Should now retrace at last, and in my age, + 

The exact highway of my youth’s escape + 

From everything that galled it and take on, + 

Like an old snake resuming his cast skins, + 

The East I fled, the little towns I mocked, + 

The dust I thought was shaken from my shoes, + 

The sleepiness from which I ran away. + 

Harriet’s right and Harriet is just + 

And Harriet’s back in that chintz-curtained room + 

From which I took her, twenty years ago, + 

With all the children who were always hers + 

Because I gave them nothing but my seed + 

And hardly heard their laughter or their tears + 

And hardly knew their faces or their names, + 

Because I listened for the wind in the bough, + 

Because my daughters were the shooting-stars, + 

Because my sons were the forgotten streams + 

And the wild silvers of the wilderness. + 

Men who go looking for the wilderness-stone + 

And find it, should not marry or beget, + 

For, if they do so, they may work a wrong + 

Deeper than any mere intent of pain. + 

And yet, what I have sought that I have sought + 

And cannot disavouch, although it is + 

The double knife that cuts the giver’s hand + 

And the unwilling taker’s. + 

So I took + 

My wife, long since, from that chintz-curtained room + 

And so she has gone back to it again + 

After these years, with children of those years, + 

And, being kind, she will not teach them there + 

To curse me, as I think, though if she did + 

She could find reason in her neighbor’s eyes, + 

And, being Harriet, she will bring them up + 

In all such houses, till the end of time, + 

As if she had not been away at all. + 

And so, at last, she’ll get the peace she should. + 

And yet, some time, a child may run away. + 

We have had sons and daughters, she and I, + 

And, of them all, one daughter and one son + 

In whom our strange bloods married with the true + 

Marriage that is not merely sheath and sword. + 

The rest are hers. Those two were partly mine. + 

I taught my son to wander in the woods + 

Till he could step the hidden paths with me + 

Light as a whisper, indolent as Spring. + 

I would not tame his sister when I might, + 

I let her follow patterns of leaves, + 

Looking for stones rejected by the wise. + 

I kept them by me jealously and long. + 

And yet, the day they took him, when he sat + 

There on his horse, before they all rode off, + 

It was his mother who looked out of him + 

And it was to his mother that he looked. + 

That is my punishment and my offence + 

And that is how it was. And he is dead. + 

Dead of a fever, buried in the South, + 

Dead in this war I thought a whirligig + 

For iron fools to play with and to kill + 

Other men’s sons, not mine. He’s buried deep. + 

I kept him by me jealously and long. + 

Well, he walked well, alive. He was my son. + 

I’ll not make tags of him. + 

We got the news. + 

She could not stay beside me after that. + 

I see so clearly why she could not stay. + 

So I retrace the hard steps of my youth + 

Now with this daughter, in a rattling cart + 

Drawn by a horse as lean as famine’s self, + 

And am an omen in the little towns⁠— + 

Because this daughter has too much of me + 

To be content with bread made out of wheat. + 

To be in love and give it up for rest, + 

To live serene without a knife at heart. + 

Such is the manner and the bound escape + 

Of those a disproportion drives unfed + 

From the world’s table, without meat or grace, + 

Though both are wholesome, but who seek instead + 

Their solitary victual like the fox. + 

And who at last return as I return + 

In the ironic wagon of the years, + 

Back to the pasture that they found too green, + 

Broken of every knowledge but the last + 

Knowledge of how escape is not a door + 

But a slow-winding road whose hundred coils + 

Return upon each other, soon or late + 

—And how and when and under what cold stars + 

The old wound bleeds beneath the armored mind. + 

And yet, this journey is not desolate + 

Nor am I desolate in it, as we crawl + 

Slowly from little town to little town + 

Always against the sun, and the horse nods, + 

And there’s my daughter talking, and her child + 

Sleeping or waking, and we stop awhile + 

And then go on awhile, and I can feel + 

The slow sun creeping through me summerlong. + 

Until, at times, I fall into a doze + 

Awake, a daydream without apparitions + 

And, falling so, inhabit for a space + 

A second childhood, calmer than the first, + 

But wise in the same fashion, and so touch + 

For a long, drowsy hour of afternoon, + 

The ripened thing, the autumn at the heart, + 

The one full star of evening that is age. + 

Yes, I must be a second child sometimes, + 

For as we pass and as they watch us pass, + 

It seems to me their eyes make stories of us + 

And I can hear those stories murmuring + 

Like pigeons in a loft when I’m asleep, + 

Till sometimes I must wonder for a while + 

If I’ve not changed myself for someone else + 

Or grown a story without knowing it, + 

And, with no intermediary death, + 

Stepped out of flesh and taken on a ghost. + 

For at such times, it almost seems to me + 

As if I were no longer what I am + 

But the deluded shade of Peter Rugg + 

Still looking for his Boston through the storm, + 

Or the strange spook of Johnny Appleseed, + 

Crept out of heaven on a windless night + 

To see if his wild orchards prosper still + 

And leave a heap of Baldwins and sweet russets + 

—Moonglittered, scrubbed with rags of silver cloud + 

And Indian magic⁠—by the lucky doors + 

Of such good people as take care of them⁠— + 

While for my daughter, though I know she’s real, + 

She and her story, yet, in the waking dream + 

She mixes with that song I used to know + 

About the Spanish lady of old days + 

Who loved the Englishman and sought for him + 

All through green England in her scarlet shoes, + 

Knowing no word of English but his name. + 

I hear her voice, where the guitar is mixed + 

With the sweet, jangling mule-bells of Castile, + 

I see her face under its high shell-comb⁠— + 

And then it is my daughter’s⁠—and I wake + 

—And yet know, even in waking, that we are + 

Somewhere between a story and a dream. + 

And so, you see, I find a kind of peace + 

In this last foray, will not rail at the sun, + 

Eat, drink and sleep, in spite of what is past, + 

Talk with my daughter, watch the turning skies. + 

The Spanish lady found her Englishman. + 

Well, we may find this boy I’ve half-forgot, + 

Although our story is another story. + 

So life works in us for a little while + 

And then the ferment’s quiet. + 

So we do + 

Wrongs much beyond intent, and suffer them. + 

So we go looking for the wilderness-stone. + 

I shall smell lilac in Connecticut + 

No doubt, before I die, and see the clean + 

White, reticent, small churches of my youth, + 

The gardens full of phlox and mignonette, + 

The pasture-bars I broke to run away. + 

It was my thought to lie in an uncropped + 

And savage field no plough had ever scored, + 

Between a bee-tree and a cast deer-horn. + 

It was my thought to lie beside a stream + 

Too secret for the very deer to find, + 

Too solitary for remembrance. + 

It was a dream. It does not matter now. + 

Bury me where the soldiers of retreat + 

Are buried, underneath the faded star, + 

Bury me where the courtiers of escape + 

Fall down, confronted with their earth again. + 

Bury me where the fences hold the land + 

And the sun sinks beyond the pasture-bars + 

Never to fall upon the wilderness-stone. + 

And yet I have escaped, in spite of all.” + 

Lucy Weatherby smoothed out clothes in a trunk + 

With a stab at her heart. + 

The trunk was packed to the lid. + 

There wasn’t an empty corner anywhere, + 

Pack as she would⁠—but the blue dress wouldn’t go in. + 

Of course she’d be getting a lot of new dresses soon + 

And the blue was old⁠—but she couldn’t leave it behind. + 

If only Henry wasn’t so selfish, at times! + 

But Henry was like all brothers and like all men, + 

Expecting a lady to travel to Canada + 

With just one trunk and the boxes! + 

It was too bad. + 

He had a trunk of his own for razors and shirts, + 

And yet she couldn’t take two⁠—and there were the hoops; + 

He kept on fussing because she wouldn’t leave them + 

When she knew he was hoping to take all those silly books, + 

As if you couldn’t buy books wherever you went! + 

She pinched her cheek and stared at the trunk again. + 

The green could come out, of course, and the blue go in, + 

But she couldn’t bear the idea of leaving the green. + 

The war, of course, and one thinks so much of the war, + 

And those terrible Yankees actually at our gates, + 

In spite of our fine, brave boys and poor Mr. Davis, + 

In spite of wearing old dresses for two whole years + 

And sending the servants out to work at the forts, + 

In spite of the cheers and the songs and the cause and the right. + 

Only, one must not be selfish. One must be brave. + 

One must think about Henry’s health and be sensible, + 

And Henry actually thinks we can get away.⁠ ⁠… + 

The blue or the green? She couldn’t decide it yet, + 

And there were all those letters to write tonight. + 

She’d simply have to write to Clay and Huger + 

About Henry’s health⁠—and how it just breaks my heart, + 

But one cannot leave one’s sick brother⁠—and afterwards, + 

One can always send one’s address⁠—and I’m sure if they do + 

We’ll give them a real, old-fashioned Richmond welcome, + 

Though they say that the British leftenants are simply sweet + 

And every Southern girl is an absolute belle. + 

They play the “Bonnie Blue Flag” at the dances there, + 

And Sara Kenefick is engaged to an earl. + 

She saw herself, for an instant, walking the safe + 

Street of a calm and British-looking town. + 

She had on a new dress. Her shoes and her hat were new. + 

A white-haired, dim-faced man in a British coat + 

Walked beside her and looked and was listening, + 

While she told him all about it, and hearing the guns, + 

And how they’d actually lived without butcher’s meat + 

For weeks and weeks⁠—and the wounded⁠—and General Lee⁠— + 

And only Henry’s health had forced them at last + 

To leave the dear South. She choked. He patted her hand. + 

He hoped they would stay in Canada for a while. + 

The blue or the green? It was dreadfully hard to choose, + 

And with all the letters to write⁠—and Jim Merrihew + 

And that nice Alabama Major⁠— + 

She heard the bells + 

Ring for a wedding, but this was a different groom, + 

This was a white-haired man with stars on his coat, + 

This was an Order wrapped in an English voice. + 

Honey, sugar-lump honey I love so dearly, + 

You have eluded the long pursuit that sought you, + 

You have eluded the hands that would so enclose you + 

And with strange passion force you. + 

What was this passion? + 

We do not know, you and I, but we would not bear it + 

And are gone free. + 

So at last, if fair girls must marry, + 

As young girls should, it is after another fashion + 

And not with youth but wisely. + 

So we are ransomed, + 

And I am yours forever and you are mine, + 

Honey, sugar-lump honey. + 

So we attain, + 

The white-haired bridegrooms with the stars on their coats + 

And yet have the beaus to dance with, for we like dancing, + 

So all the world finds our wifely devotion charming, + 

So we play all day in the heat of the sun. + 

She held the blue dress under her chin once more + 

And smoothed it with one white hand. Then she put it down + 

Smiling a little. No, it couldn’t go in, + 

But she would see if she couldn’t help Henry pack, + 

And if she did, the blue could go with his shirts. + 

It hardly mattered, leaving some shirts behind. + 

Sherman’s buzzin’ along to de sea, + 

Jubili, Jubilo! + 

Sherman’s buzzin’ along to de sea, + 

Like Moses ridin’ on a bumblebee, + 

Settin’ de prisoned and de humble free! + 

Hit’s de year of Jubilo! + 

Massa was de whale wid de big inside, + 

Jubili, Jubilo! + 

Massa was de lion and de lion’s hide. + 

But de Lord God smacked him in his hardheart pride, + 

And de whale unswallered, and de lion died! + 

Hit’s de year of Jubilo! + 

Oh, hit don’t matter if you’s black or tan, + 

Jubili, Jubilo! + 

Hit don’t matter if you’s black or tan, + 

When you hear de noise of de freedom-ban’ + 

You’s snatched bald-headed to de Promise Lan’, + 

Hit’s de year of Jubilo! + 

Oh, hit don’t matter if you pine or ail, + 

Jubili, Jubilo! + 

Hit don’t matter if you pine or ail, + 

Hit don’t matter if you’s been in jail, + 

De Lord’s got mercy for your mumblin’ tale! + 

Hit’s de year of Jubilo! + 

Every nigger’s gwine to own a mule, + 

Jubili, Jubilo! + 

Every nigger’s gwine to own a mule, + 

An’ live like Adam in de Golden Rule, + 

An’ send his chillun to de white-folks’ school! + 

In de year of Jubilo! + 

Fall down on your knees and bless de Lord, + 

Jubili, Jubilo! + 

Fall down on your knees and bless de Lord, + 

Dat chased old Pharaoh wid a lightnin’-sword, + 

And rose up Izzul fum de withered gourd, + 

Hit’s de year of Jubilo! + 

Shout thanksgivin’ and shout it loud! + 

Jubili, Jubilo! + 

Shout thanksgivin’ and shout it loud, + 

We was dead and buried in de Lazrus-shroud, + 

But de Lord came down in a glory-cloud, + 

An’ He gave us Jubilo! + 

So Sherman goes from Atlanta to the sea + 

Through the red-earth heart of the land, through the pine-smoke haze + 

Of the warm, last months of the year. + 

In the evenings + 

The skies are green as the thin, clear ice on the pools + 

That melts to water again in the heat of noon. + 

A few black trees are solemn against those skies. + 

The soldiers feel the winter touching the air + 

With a little ice. + 

But when the sun has come up, + 

When they halt at noonday, mopping their sweaty brows, + 

The skies are blue and soft and without a cloud. + 

Strange march, half-war, half trooping picnic-parade, + 

Cutting a ruinous swathe through the red earth land; + 

March of the hardy bummers and coffee-coolers + 

Who, having been told to forage, loot as they can + 

And leave a wound that rankles for sixty years. + 

March of the honest, who did not loot when they could + 

And so are not remembered in Southern legend. + 

Rough-bearded Sherman riding the red-earth roads, + 

Writing home that his rascals are fat and happy, + 

Saying or else not saying that war is hell, + 

Saying he almost trembles himself to think + 

Of what will happen when Charleston falls in the hands + 

Of those same rascals⁠—and yet, when we read that march, + 

Hardly the smoking dragon he has been called, + 

But the mere rough-handed man who rode with a hard + 

Bit through the land, unanxious to spare his foe + 

Nor grimly anxious to torture for torture’s sake, + 

Smashing this and that⁠—and yet, in the end, + 

Giving such terms to the foe struck down at last + 

That the men in Washington disavow them and him + 

For over-kindness. + 

So now, through the pine-smoke Fall, + 

The long worm of his army creeps toward Savannah + 

Leaving its swathe behind. + 

In the ruined gardens + 

The buried silver lies well hid in the ground. + 

A looter pocks bullet-marks in an old oil-portrait. + 

A woman wails and rages against the thieves + 

Who carry her dead child’s clothes on their drunken bayonets. + 

A looter swings from a pine tree for thefts too crude. + 

A fresh-faced boy gets scars he will carry long + 

Hauling a crippled girl from a burning house, + 

But gets no thanks but hate from the thing he saved, + 

And everywhere, + 

A black earth stirs, a wind blows over black earth, + 

A wind blows into black faces, into old hands + 

Knotted with long rheumatics, cramped on the hoe, + 

Into old backs bent double over the cotton, + 

The wind of freedom, the wind of the jubilo. + 

They stray from the lost plantations like children strayed, + 

Grinning and singing, following the blue soldiers, + 

They steal from the lonesome cabins like runaways + 

Laden with sticks and bundles and conjur-charms; + 

A huge black mother carries her sucking child + 

Wrapped in a quilt, a slim brown girl and her lover + 

Wander November woods like Adam and Eve, + 

Living on roots and rabbits and liberty, + 

An old grey field hand dimly plods through the mud, + 

Looking for some vague place he has heard about + 

Where Linkum sits at a desk in his gold silk hat + 

With a bag of silver dollars in either hand + 

For every old grey field hand that comes to him, + 

All God’s chillun got shoes there and fine new clothes, + 

All God’s chillun got peace there and roastin’-ears, + 

Hills of barbecue, rivers of pot-licker, + 

Nobody’s got to work there, never no more. + 

His feet are sore with the road but he stumbles on, + 

A hundred, a thousand others stumble as he, + 

Chanting, dizzied, drunken with a strange fever, + 

A child’s delight, a brightness too huge to grasp, + 

The hidden nation, untaught, unrecognized, + 

Free at last, but not yet free with the free, + 

Ignorant, joyful, wronged, child-minded and searching, + 

Searching the army’s road for this new wild thing + 

That means so much but can’t be held in the hand, + 

That must be there, that yet is so hard to find, + 

This dream, this pentecost changing, this liberty. + 

Some wander away to strange death or stranger life, + 

Some wander awhile and starve and come back at last, + 

Some stay by the old plantation but will not work + 

To the great disgust of masters and mistresses, + 

Sing idly, gamble, sleep through the lazy hours, + 

Waiting for friendly heaven to rain them down + 

The mule and the forty acres of their desire. + 

Some, faithful beyond the bond that they never signed, + 

Hold to that bond in ruin as in the sun, + 

Steal food for a hungry mistress, keep her alive, + 

Keep the house alive, try to pick the weeds from the path, + 

Gather the wood and chop it and make the fire, + 

With pitying scorn for the runaway sheep of freedom, + 

Freedom’s a ghost and freedom’s a foolish talk, + 

What counts is making the fire as it should be made.⁠ ⁠… + 

Oh, blackskinned epic, epic with the black spear, + 

I cannot sing you, having too white a heart, + 

And yet, some day, a poet will rise to sing you + 

And sing you with such truth and mellowness, + 

—Deep mellow of the husky, golden voice + 

Crying dark heaven through the spirituals, + 

Soft mellow of the levee roustabouts, + 

Singing at night against the banjo-moon⁠— + 

That you will be a match for any song + 

Sung by old, populous nations in the past, + 

And stand like hills against the American sky, + 

And lay your black spear down by Roland’s horn. + 

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the scythe of the march mows on, + 

The Southern papers discount it as best they can. + 

Lincoln is anxious, Davis more anxious still. + 

The war is in its last winter of strife and pain. + 

Cudjo buried the silverware + 

On a graveyard night of sultry air + 

While the turned sods smelled of the winter damp + 

And Mary Lou Wingate held the lamp. + 

They worked with a will. They did not speak. + 

The light was yellow. The light was weak. + 

A tomb-light casting a last, brief flame + 

Over the grave of Wingate fame. + 

The silver bowl of the Wingate toasts, + 

The spoons worn hollow by Wingate ghosts, + 

Sconce and ladle and bead-rimmed plate + 

With the English mark and the English weight, + 

The round old porringer, dented so + 

By the first milk-teeth of the long ago, + 

And the candlesticks of Elspeth Mackay + 

That she brought with her youth on her wedding-day + 

To light the living of Wingate Hall + 

While the mornings break and the twilights fall + 

And the night and the river have memories.⁠ ⁠… + 

There was a spook in Cudjo’s eyes + 

As he lowered the chests where they must lie + 

And patted the earth back cunningly. + 

He knew each chest and its diverse freight + 

As a blind man knows his own front gate + 

And, decade by decade and piece by piece, + 

With paste and shammy and elbow-grease, + 

He had made them his, by the pursed-up lips + 

And the tireless, polishing fingertips, + 

Till now as he buried them, each and all, + 

What he buried was Wingate Hall, + 

Himself and the moon and the toddy-sippers, + 

The river-mist and the dancing-slippers, + 

Old Marse Billy and Mary Lou + 

And every bit of the world he knew, + 

Master and lady and house and slave, + 

All smoothed down in a single grave. + 

He was finished at length. He shook his head. + 

“Mistis, reckon we’s done,” he said. + 

They looked at each other, black and white, + 

For a slow-paced moment across the light. + 

Then he took the lamp and she smoothed her shawl + 

And he lit her back to the plundered Hall, + 

To pray, with her old serene observance + 

For the mercy of God upon faithful servants + 

And a justice striking all Yankees dead + 

On her cold, worn knees by the great carved bed, + 

Where she had lain by a gentleman’s side, + 

Wife and mother and new-come bride, + 

Sick with the carrying, torn with the borning, + 

Waked by the laughter on Christmas morning, + 

Through love and temper and joy and grief, + 

And the years gone by like the blowing leaf. + 

She finished her prayer with Louisa’s child, + 

And, when she had risen, she almost smiled. + 

She struck her hand on the bedstead head, + 

“They won’t drive me from my house,” she said, + 

As the wood rang under her wedding-ring. + 

Then she stood for a moment, listening, + 

As if for a step, or a gentleman’s name, + 

But only the gnats and the echoes came. + 

Cudjo, being less fortified, + 

Covered his ears with his hands and tried + 

To shut the noise of the risen wind + 

Out of the trouble of his mind. + 

He thought, “Ain’t right for dat wind to blow. + 

She wasn’t blowing awhile ago. + 

Jus’ riz up fum de earth somewhere + 

When we buried dat orphan silver dere. + 

Got to hide it, and so we tried, + 

But silver like dat don’t like to hide, + 

Silver’s ust to be passed aroun’ + 

Don’t like lyin’ in lonesome groun’, + 

Wants to come back to de Hall, all right. + 

Silver, I always shone you bright, + 

You could see yo’self in de shine⁠— + 

Silver, it wasn’t no fix of mine! + 

Don’t you come projeckin’ after me!” + 

His eyes were shut but he still could see + 

The slow chests rising out of the ground + 

With an ominous clatter of silver sound, + 

The locks undoing, the bags unfastening, + 

And every knife and platter and spoon + 

Clinking out of the grave and hastening + 

Back to the Hall, in the witches’ moon; + 

And the wind in the chimney played such tricks + 

That it was no wind, be it soft or loud, + 

But Elspeth seeking her candlesticks + 

All night long in her ruffled shroud, + 

The deep voice haunting the ocean-shell + 

To give her judgment and weave her spell, + 

“Thrift and love for the house and the chief + 

And a scone on the hob for the son of grief, + 

But a knife in the ribs for the pleasant thief.” + 

Cudjo heard it, and Cudjo shook, + 

And Cudjo felt for the Holy Book, + 

And the wind blew on without peace or rest, + 

Blowing the straws from the dried-up nest. + 

Bailey, tramping along with Sherman’s bummers, + 

Grumbled and found life pleasant and hummed his tune. + 

He was well, the blood ran in him, he ate for ten, + 

He and the gang had salvaged a wall-eyed nig + 

To fix their victuals⁠—and if the captain was on, + 

The captain had a blind eye. + 

Last night it was turkey, + 

The night before it was duck⁠—well, you couldn’t expect + 

Such things to keep on forever, but while they did + 

It was pretty soft⁠—it was war like it ought to be. + 

The Old Man marched ’em hard, but that was all right. + 

The Old Man knew his job and the nig was a buster + 

And the gang was as good a gang as you’d hope to find, + 

None of your coffee-coolers and straggle-tails + 

But a regular gang that ran like an eight-day clock. + 

Oh it was gravy, it was the real duck soup, + 

Marchin’ into Atlanta after the fight + 

And then this marchin’⁠—well, they were due for it, + 

And he was a sergeant now. + 

And up in his pack + 

Were souvenirs for the red-haired widow in Cairo, + 

Some of ’em bought and some just sort of picked up + 

But not a dam one stolen, to call it stealin’. + 

He wasn’t a coffee-cooler or a slick Susio. + 

Poor little kid⁠—she’d had a pretty tough time⁠— + 

Cry like a fool when she gets a squint at that brooch⁠— + 

They said you couldn’t tell about widows much, + 

But what the hell⁠—he wasn’t a barnyard virgin⁠— + 

He liked a woman who’d been over the bumps + 

And kept her get-up-and-git and her sassiness. + 

Spitfire-sweetie, you’re my valentine now, + 

Bet the kids have red hair⁠—well you can’t help that⁠— + 

But they’ll all look like Poppa or he’ll know why. + 

He mused a moment, thinking of Ellyat now. + 

There was another kid and a crazy kid, + 

Sort of missed him, hope he’s gettin’ it soft, + 

Must have got a banger at Gettysburg, + 

Wrote me a letter a couple of months ago, + 

Maybe six, I dunno, I sort of forget. + 

Ought to give him his old spread-eagle now, + 

Darn good kid, but done enough for his pay. + 

Hope he finds that girl he was talkin’ about, + 

Sounds like a pretty good piece for a storm-and-strife, + 

Skinny, though⁠—we like ’em more of a weight, + 

Don’t we, Carrots? + 

Well, it’s all in a life. + 

Ought to write him sometime if we get a chance, + 

Wish we was West⁠—we’d have him out to the weddin’, + 

Me and Bessie, show him the Cairo girls, + 

Hand him the fireman’s grip and give him a time. + 

His heart was overflowing with charity, + 

But his throat was dry as the bottom of his canteen. + 

There was a big, white house, some way from the road.⁠ ⁠… + 

He found his captain, saluted and put his question. + 

The captain’s eyes were satiric but not displeased. + 

“All right, Sergeant, take your detail and forage, + 

We’re running low on bacon, it seems to me, + 

And if you happen to find a pigeon or two + 

Remember the Colonel’s penchant for pigeon-pie. + 

But don’t waste time and don’t put your hopes too high, + 

The Nth Corps must have gone by there hours ago + 

And they’re the biggest thieves in this whole, wide army. + 

You’ll be back, in ranks, all sober, in just two hours + 

Or you won’t have stripes. And if I find one more man + 

Trying to take a pet with him on this march, + 

I don’t care if it’s only a treetoad, I’ll skin him alive.” + 

So Bailey came to the door of Wingate Hall, + 

With the high wind blowing against him and gave his orders. + 

“Make it quick now, boys⁠—don’t cut any monkeyshines, + 

But be sure and get the pigeons if they’re around. + 

Clark, you and Ellis stay with me by the door, + 

I’m going to talk to the house if there’s anyone left.” + 

He knocked and called. There was a long, heavy silence. + 

“Hey you, the house!” The silence made him feel queer. + 

He cursed impatiently and pushed at the door. + 

It swung wide open. He turned to Ellis and Clark. + 

“I’m goin’ in,” he said. “If you hear me yell + 

Come in bilin’.” + 

They watched him with mocking eyes. + 

“Wish to hell they’d make me a sergeant, Clark,” + 

“A three-stripe souvenir sergeant.” + 

“Aw, hell,” said Clark, + 

“Bailey’s all right. He’ll let us in on the juice + 

If there’s any lawful juice that a man could get.” + 

“Sure he’s all right. Who says that he ain’t all right!” + 

“But all the same, he’s a sergeant.” + 

Bailey, meanwhile + 

Was roving like a lost soul through great, empty rooms + 

And staring at various objects that caught his eye. + 

Funny old boy with a wig, hung up on the wall, + 

Queer sort of chairs, made your hands feel dirty to touch ’em + 

Though they were faded. + 

Everything faded and old + 

And quiet⁠—and the wind blowin’⁠—he moved as on tiptoe + 

Though he couldn’t say why he did. + 

Old workbasket there. + 

He opened it idly⁠—most of the things were gone + 

But there was a pair of little, gold-mounted scissors + 

Made like a bird, with the blades the beak of the bird. + 

He picked it up and opened and shut the blades. + 

Hadn’t rusted⁠—sort of handsome and queer⁠— + 

Bessie would certainly like it⁠— + 

He held it a minute. + 

Wouldn’t take up any room. Then he frowned at the thing. + 

“Aw hell,” he said, “I got enough souvenirs. + 

I ain’t no damn coffee-cooler.” + 

He started to put the scissors back in the case + 

And turned to face a slight grey-headed old woman + 

Dressed in black, with eyes that burned through his skin + 

And a voice that cut at his mind like a rawhide whip, + 

Calling him fifty different kinds of a thief + 

And Yankee devil and liar and God knows what, + 

Tearing the throat of her dress with her thin old hands + 

And telling him he could shoot her down like a dog + 

But he’d steal her children’s things over her dead body. + 

My God, as if you went around shootin’ old women + 

For fun, my God! + 

He couldn’t even explain. + 

She was like all of ’em, made him sick in his lunch. + 

“Oh hell,” he yelled. “Shut up about your damn scissors, + 

This is a war, old lady!” + 

“That’s right,” she said, + 

“Curse a helpless female, you big, brave soldier.” + 

Well, what was a man to do? + 

He got out of the house, + 

Sore and angry, mean as a man could feel, + 

But her voice still followed, reviling, making him burn. + 

Now, where in hell was that detail? + 

He saw them now, + 

All except Clark and Ellis, gathered around + 

A white-polled nigger wringing his hands and weeping. + 

One man had a neck-wrung pigeon stuffed in his blouse. + 

Well, that was something. + 

He laid his hand on the nigger. + 

“Hey, Uncle, where’s the well? You folks got a well?” + 

But the nigger just kept on crying like an old fool. + 

“He thinks we’re goin’ to scalp him,” said one of the men, + 

“I told him twict that he’s free but the shine won’t listen. + 

I give him some money, too, but he let it drop. + 

The rest of ’em run away when the army came.” + 

“Well, tell him he’s safe and make him rustle some water, + 

I’m dry as a preacher’s tongue. Where’s Ellis and Clark?” + 

He found Clark solemnly prodding the hard dirt floor + 

Of a negro cabin, while Ellis lighted the task + 

With a splinter of burning pine. + 

His rage exploded + 

In boiling lava. They listened respectfully. + 

“And next time, I give you an order,” he ended up, + 

“Why you ⸻ ⸻ ⸻” + 

Clark wiped his face with his sleeve. + 

“Sorry, Sergeant,” he said in an awed, low voice. + 

“Well you better be! What the hell do you think you’re at, + 

Playin’ tit-tat-toe or buryin’ somebody’s dog?” + 

“Well, Sergeant,” said Ellis, humbly, “I allus heard + 

They buried stuff, sometimes, under these here cabins. + 

Well, I thought we could take a look⁠—well⁠—” + 

“Huh?” said Bailey + 

He seized the torch and looked at the trodden floor + 

For an instant. Then his pride and his rage returned. + 

“Hell’s fire!” he said, and threw the splinter aside, + 

“That’s just about what you would think, you and Clark. + 

Come out of there on the double! Yes, I said you!” + 

They were halfway down the driveway when Ellis spoke. + 

“Sergeant,” he said. “There’s somethin’ on fire back there.” + 

Bailey stopped⁠—looked back⁠—a smoke-puff climbed in the sky + 

And the wind was high. + 

He hesitated a moment. + 

The cabin must have caught from the burning splinter. + 

Then he set his jaw. Well, suppose the cabin had caught? + 

—Damned old woman in black who called him a thief. + 

Serve her right if all her cabins burnt up. + 

The house wouldn’t catch⁠—and here they were, losing time⁠— + 

“Oh well,” he said. “That nigger’ll put it out. + 

It ain’t our detail⁠—mosey along with it there⁠— + 

The Cap won’t mind if we run it on him a little, + 

Now we got the Colonel’s squab, but we better step.” + 

They hurried along. The smoke rose higher behind them. + 

The wind blew the burning flakes on Wingate Hall. + 

Sally Dupré stared out of her bedroom window + 

As she had stared many times at that clump of trees, + 

And saw the smoke rise out of it, thick and dark. + 

They hadn’t had much trouble at Appleton. + 

It was too far off the main road⁠—and, as for the slaves, + 

Those who straggled after the troops were better away. + 

The aunts complained, of course⁠—well, the aunts complained. + 

They were old, and, at least, they had a man in the house, + 

Even if the man were but crippled old Uncle Paul. + 

It was the end of the world for him and the aunts. + 

It wasn’t for her. + 

The years had worn on her youth, + 

Much had worn, but not the crook from her smile + 

Nor the hidden lightness out of her narrow feet. + 

She looked at the smoke again, and her eyes were grey + 

And then they were black as that smoke. She felt the fire + 

Run on her flesh. “It’s Wingate Hall and it’s burning! + 

House that married my lover before he saw me, + 

You are burning, burning away in a little smoke, + 

Burning the wall between us with your fierce burning, + 

Burning the strife between us in your black flame, + 

Burning down.” + 

She trod for an instant there + 

A light glass floor of omen, brighter than sleet + 

Over a hurtless fire. + 

Then she caught her breath. + 

The flesh was cool, the blackness died from her eyes. + 

“We’ll have to get the slaves if the slaves will go. + 

I know Ned will. I’m not sure about Bob or Jim. + 

Uncle Paul must give me his pistol. I’ll have to start them. + 

They won’t go without me. The aunts won’t be any use. + 

Why wouldn’t she come over here when we all first heard? + 

I know why she wouldn’t. I never liked her so much. + 

Hurry, Sally!” + 

She ran downstairs like the wind. + 

They worked at the Hall that night till the dawn came up, + 

Two smoke-stained women, Cudjo and Bob and Ned, + 

But when the dawn had risen, the Hall was gone + 

And Elspeth’s candles would not light it again. + 

Wingate wearily tried to goad + 

A bag of bones on a muddy road + 

Under the grey and April sky + 

While Bristol hummed in his irony + 

“If you want a good time, jine the cavalry! + 

Well, we jined it, and here we go, + 

The last event in the circus-show, + 

The bareback boys in the burnin’ hoop + 

Mounted on cases of chicken-croup, + 

The rovin’ remains of the Black Horse Troop! + 

Though the only horse you could call real black + 

Is the horsefly sittin’ on Shepley’s back, + 

But, women and children, do not fear, + 

They’ll feed the lions and us, next year. + 

And, women and children, dry your eyes, + 

The Southern gentleman never dies. + 

He just lives on by his strength of will + 

Like a damn ole rooster too tough to kill + 

Or a brand-new government dollar-bill + 

That you can use for a trousers-patch + 

Or lightin’ a fire, if you’ve got a match, + 

Or makin’ a bunny a paper collar, + 

Or anythin’ else⁠—except a dollar. + 

Old folks, young folks, never you care, + 

The Yanks are here and the Yanks are there, + 

But no Southern gentleman knows despair. + 

He just goes on in his usual way, + 

Eatin’ a meal every fifteenth day + 

And showin’ such skill in his change of base + 

That he never gets time to wash his face + 

While he fights with a fury you’d seldom find + 

Except in a Home for the Crippled Blind, + 

And can whip five Yanks with a palmleaf hat, + 

Only the Yanks won’t fight like that. + 

Ladies and gentlemen, here we go! + 

The last event in the minstrel show! + 

Georgia’s genuine gamboliers, + 

(Ladies and gentlemen, dry those tears!) + 

See the sergeant, eatin’ the hay + 

Of his faithful horse, in a lifelike way! + 

See the general, out for blood, + 

And try to tell the man from the mud! + 

See the platoon in its savage lair, + 

A half-grown boy on a wheezy mare. + 

Ladies and gentlemen, pass the hat! + 

We’ve got one trick that you won’t forget, + 

‘The Vanishin’ Commissariat’ + 

And nobody’s found the answer yet! + 

Here we go, here we go, + 

The last parade of the circus-show, + 

Longstreet’s orphans, Lee’s everlastin’s + 

Half cast-iron and half corn-pone, + 

And if gettin’ to heaven means prayer and fastin’s + 

We ought to get there on the fasts alone. + 

Here we go with our weddin’ bells, + 

Mr. Davis’s immortelles, + 

Mr. Lincoln’s Thanksgivin’ turkey, + 

Run right ragged but actin’ perky, + 

Chased right handsome, but still not carved, + 

—We had fleas, but the fleas all starved. + 

We had rations and new recruits, + 

Uniforms and cavalry-boots, + 

Must have mislaid, for we can’t find ’em. + 

They all went home with their tails behind ’em. + 

Here we are, like the old man’s mutton, + 

Pretty well sheared, but not past buttin’, + 

Lee’s last invalids, heart and hand, + 

All wropped up in a woolen band, + 

Oh, Dixie land⁠ ⁠… oh, Dixie land!⁠ ⁠…” + 

He tossed his hat and caught it again + 

And Wingate recalled, without grief or pain + 

Or any quietus but memory + 

Lucy, under another sky, + 

White and gold as a lily bed, + 

Giving toy ribbons to all her dead. + 

She had been pretty and she was gone, + 

But the dead were here⁠—and the dead rode on, + 

Over a road of mud and stones, + 

Each one horsed on a bag of bones. + 

Lucy, you carried a golden head, + 

But I am free of you, being dead. + 

Father’s back in that cluttered hall + 

Where the beds are solid from wall to wall + 

And the scrubbed old floor has a rusty stain. + 

He’ll never ride with the dogs again, + 

Call Bathsheba or Planter’s Child + 

In the old, high quaver that drives them wild + 

—Rocketing hounds on a red-hot scent⁠— + 

After such wounds, men do not ride. + 

I think that his heart was innocent. + 

I know he rode by the riverside, + 

Calling Blue Ruin or Georgia Lad + 

With the huntsman’s crotchet that sets them mad. + 

His face was ruddy⁠—his face is white⁠— + 

I wonder if Father died last night? + 

That cloud in the sky is a thunderhead. + 

The world I knew is a long time dead. + 

Shepley looks like a knife on guard, + 

Reckon he’s taking it mighty hard, + 

Reckon he loved her and no mistake, + 

Glad it isn’t my wedding cake, + 

Wainscott oughtn’t to plague him so, + 

Means all right but he doesn’t know. + 

“Here we go, here we go, + 

The last events of the minstrel-show!” + 

Shepley suddenly turned his head. + 

“Mr. Bristol’s funny,” he said. + 

The voice was flat with an injury. + 

Bristol stared at him, puzzledly. + 

“What’s the matter with you, Huger? + 

Lost your dog or your rosy cheeks? + 

Haven’t been human for weeks and weeks. + 

I’ll sing you a hymn, if you’re so inclined, + 

But the rest of the boys don’t seem to mind. + 

Are you feelin’ poorly or just unkind?” + 

Shepley looked at him with the blind + 

Eyes of a man too long at war + 

And too long nursing a secret sore. + 

“Mr. Bristol’s funny,” said he, + 

In a level voice of enmity. + 

Bristol laughed, but his face grew red. + 

“Well, if you take it like that⁠—” he said. + 

“Here we go, here we go, + 

The old Confederate minstrel-show!” + 

His mouth was merry, he tossed his hat, + 

“Belles skedaddled and left us flat⁠—” + 

Shepley leaned from his swaying hips + 

And flicked him over the singing lips. + 

“Will you take it?” he said, “or let it go?” + 

You never could sing for shucks, you know.” + 

The color drained out of Bristol’s face. + 

He bowed with an odd, old-fashioned grace. + 

“Name your people and choose your land, + 

I don’t take a slap from God’s own hand. + 

Mr. Shepley, your servant, sir.” + 

They stared at each other across a blur. + 

The troop stared with them, halted and still. + 

A rider lunged from the top of the hill, + 

Dusty man with a bandaged hand + 

Spilling his orders. + 

“Who’s in command? + 

Well, it doesn’t signify, more or less. + 

You can hold the Yanks for a while, I guess. + 

Make ’em think you’re the whole rear guard + 

If you can do it⁠—they’re pressin’ hard + 

And somebody’s got to lose some hair. + 

Keep ’em away from that bend down there + 

As long as a horse or a man can stand. + 

You might give ’em a charge, if you think you can, + 

And we’ll meet sometime in the Promised Land, + 

For I can’t spare you another man.” + 

Bristol whistled, a shrill, sweet slur. + 

“Beg to acknowledge the orders, sir. + 

Boys, we’re booked for the shivaree. + 

Give our regards to the infantry + 

And tell Marse Robert, with fortitude, + 

We stacked up pretty as hickory-wood. + 

While might I ask, while bein’ polite, + 

How many Yank armies we aim to fight?” + 

“Well,” said the other, “about a corps. + 

Roughly speakin’⁠—there may be more.” + 

“Thank you,” said Bristol, “that’s mighty sweet. + 

You will not remain at the mourner’s seat? + 

No sir? Well, I imagined not, + 

For from this time hence it will be right hot. + 

He turned to Shepley with his punctilious + 

Air of the devil turned supercilious + 

When the damned display a vulgar nettlement. + 

“Sir, I regret that our little settlement + 

Must be postponed for a fitter season, + 

But war and necessity know no reason, + 

And should we survive in this comin’ fracas + 

I’ll do you the honors⁠—you damned old jackass!” + 

Shepley grinned at his sometime friend. + 

They took the cover they must defend. + 

Wingate, fighting from tree to tree, + 

Felt a red-hot skewer surgeon his knee + 

And felt his shoulder hitting the ground. + 

He rolled on his side and made a sound, + 

Dimly seeing through failing sight + 

The last brief passion of his last fight. + 

One Cotter dying, the other dead + 

With the brains run out of his shattered head. + 

Stuart Cazenove trying to squirm + 

His way to the road like a scythe-cut worm, + 

Weakly humming “Cadet Rousselle,” + 

Shot through the belly and half in hell, + 

While Shepley croaked through a bloody spray, + 

“Come on, you bastards, and get your pay. + 

We’ve fought you mounted and fought you standin’ + 

And I got a hole I could put my hand in⁠— + 

And they’re comin’, Wayne⁠—and it hurts my head⁠—” + 

Bristol looked at him, lying dead. + 

“Got the start of me, Shep,” he said. + 

“Dirty welchers, killin’ Huger + 

Before we could settle up properly.” + 

He stooped to the body and took its pistol + 

And Wingate saw, through a rising mist, + 

The last, cold madness of Wainscott Bristol, + 

Walking out like a duellist + 

With his torn coat buttoned up at the throat + 

As if it were still the broadcloth coat + 

Duellists button to show no fleck + 

Of telltale white at the wrists or neck. + 

He stepped from his cover and dropped his hat. + 

“Yanks, come get it!” he said and spat + 

While his pistols cracked with a single crack, + 

“Here we go on the red dog’s back! + 

High, low, jack and the goddam game.” + 

And then the answering volley came. + 

Wingate waked from a bloodshot dream. + 

They were touching his leg and he heard his scream. + 

A blue-chinned man said a word or two. + 

“Well now, Johnny, you ought to do + 

Till the sawbones comes with his movin’-van, + 

And you’re lucky you’re livin’, little man. + 

But why the hell did you act so strict, + 

Fightin’ like that when you know you’re licked, + 

And where’s the rest of your damn brigade?” + 

The voice died out as the ripples fade + 

Into the flow of the running stream, + 

And Wingate sank to the bloodshot dream. + 

Richmond is fallen⁠—Lincoln walks in its streets, + 

Alone, unguarded, stops at George Pickett’s house, + 

Knocks at George Pickett’s door. George Pickett has gone + 

But the strange, gaunt figure talks to George Pickett’s wife + 

A moment⁠—she thinks she is dreaming, seeing him there⁠— + 

“Just one of George Pickett’s old friends, m’am.” + 

He turns away. + 

She watches him down the street with wondering eyes. + 

The red light falls upon him from the red sky. + 

Houses are burning, strange shadows flee through the streets. + 

A gang of loafers is broaching a liquor-barrel + 

In a red-lit square. The liquor spills on the cobbles. + 

They try to scoop it up in their dirty hands. + 

A long, blue column tramps by, shouting “John Brown’s Body.” + 

The loafers scatter like wasps from a half-sucked pear, + 

Come back when the column is gone. + 

A half-crazy slave + 

Mounts on a stoop and starts to preach to the sky. + 

A white-haired woman shoos him away with a broom. + 

He mumbles and reels to the shadows. + 

A general passes, + 

His escort armed with drawn sabres. The sabres shine + 

In the red, low light. + 

Two doors away, down the street, + 

A woman is sobbing the same long sob all night + 

Beside a corpse with crossed hands. + 

Lincoln passes on. + 

On the way to Appomattox, the ghost of an army + 

Staggers a muddy road for a week or so + 

Through fights and weather, dwindling away each day. + 

For a brief while Davis is with them and then he goes + 

To be tracked by his private furies into the last + 

Sad farce of his capture, and, later, to wear his chains. + 

Benjamin is with them for some few days, + 

Still sleek, still lively, still impeccably dressed, + 

Taking adversity as he took success + 

With the silk-ribbed fan of his slight, unchangeable smile. + 

Behind that fan, his mind weighs war and defeat + 

In an old balance. + 

One day he is there and smiling. + 

The next he is gone as if he had taken fernseed + 

And walked invisible so through the Union lines. + 

You will not find that smile in a Northern prison + 

Though you seek from now till Doomsday. It is too wise. + 

You will find the chief with the chin like John Calhoun’s, + 

Gadfly-stung, tormented by hostile fate, + 

You will find many gallant blockheads and tragic nobles + 

But not the black-eyed man with life in his eyes. + 

So this week, this death-march, these final, desperate strokes, + 

These last blood-spots on the harvest⁠—until, at length, + 

The battered grey advance guard, hoping to break + 

A last, miraculous hole through the closing net, + 

Sees Ord’s whole corps as if risen out of the ground + 

Before them, blocking all hope. + 

The letters are written, + 

The orders given, while stray fighting goes on + 

And grey men and blue men die in odd clumps of ground + 

Before the orders can reach them. + 

An aide-de-camp + 

Seeks a suitable house for the council from a chance farmer. + 

The first one found is too dirty to please his mind, + 

He picks another. + 

The chiefs and the captains meet, + 

Lee erect in his best dress uniform, + 

His dress-sword hung at his side and his eyes unaltered. + 

Chunky Grant in his mudsplashed private’s gear + 

With the battered stars on his shoulders. + 

They talk a while + 

Of Mexico and old days. + 

Then the terms are stated. + 

Lee finds them generous, says so, makes a request. + 

His men will need their horses for the spring-ploughing. + 

Grant assents at once. + 

There is no parade of bright sword’s + 

Given or taken. Grant saw that there should not be. + 

It is over, then.⁠ ⁠… + 

Lee walks from the little room. + 

His face is unchanged. It will not change when he dies. + 

But as he steps on the porch and looks toward his lines + 

He strikes his hands together once with a sound.⁠ ⁠… + 

In the room he has left, the blue men stare at each other + 

For a space of heartbeats, silent. The grey ride off. + 

They are gone⁠—it is over.⁠ ⁠… + 

The room explodes like a bomb, they are laughing and shouting, + 

Yelling strange words, dragging chairs and tables outdoors, + 

Bearded generals waltzing with one another + 

For a brief, wild moment, punching each others’ ribs, + 

Everyone talking at once and nobody listening, + 

“It’s over⁠—it’s done⁠—it’s finished!” + 

Then, order again. + 

The grey ghost-army falls in for the last time, + 

Marching to stack its arms. + 

As the ranks move forward + 

The blue guns go to “Present.” Gordon sees the gesture. + 

He sweeps his sabre down in the full salute. + 

There are no cheers or words from blue lines or grey. + 

Only the sound of feet.⁠ ⁠… + 

It is over, now.⁠ ⁠… + 

The arms are stacked from the war. + 

A few bronzed, tattered grey men, weeping or silent, + 

Tear some riddled bits of cloth from the color-staffs + 

And try to hide them under their uniforms. + 

Jake Diefer, ploughing, a day of the early Spring, + 

Smelt April steam from the ground as he turned it up + 

And wondered how the new forty would do this year. + 

The stump of his left arm ached in the living wind. + 

It was not a new pain. + 

When he got back to the house + 

The woman would ease it some with her liniments + 

But there wasn’t much you could do. + 

The boy had been smart. + 

The boy had fixed the jigger so he could plough. + 

It wasn’t an arm you could show to company + 

With a regular-looking hand, but it did the work. + 

The woman still hankered after the varnished one + 

They’d seen that day in the Philadelphia store + 

—Well, he’d tried it on, and it was a handsome arm, + 

And, if the new forty did well⁠— + 

Meanwhile, the huge + 

Muscles of his right shoulder bulged with the strain + 

As the plough sheared on. + 

Sometimes, the blade of the plough + 

Still turned up such odd harvest as bullets leave, + 

A spoilt canteen, the brass of a cartridge-pouch, + 

An eyeless skull, too white for the grin it wore. + 

But these were rarer now. + 

They had cleaned the well. + 

They could drink from the well again. + 

The earth was in plough. + 

He turned his team and started the backward furrow. + 

He was clumsy still, in some matters, but he could manage. + 

This year he’d see his own wheat. + 

He thought to himself: + 

“You ain’t the feller you was but the ground looks good. + 

It smells like good plantin’ weather. We cleaned the well. + 

Maybe some time we’ll get you that varnished arm, + 

For Sundays, maybe. It’d look good on Sundays.” + 

He gazed ahead. + 

By the end of the farther fence + 

A ragamuffin-something leaned on the rail, + 

Regarding him and his team. + 

“Tramp feller,” he thought, + 

“Colored man, too⁠—well, he can’t hang around this farm, + 

Him or no other tramps. I wish I could get + 

An honest to God cheap hired man.” + 

The team drew near. + 

The negro did not move. + 

Jake halted the team. + 

They stared at each other. One saw a crippled ox, + 

The other a scar-faced spectre with haunted eyes + 

Still dressed in the rags of a shoddy uniform. + 

“Well, feller?” said Jake. + 

The negro said “ ’Scuse me, Sarjun.” + 

He scratched his head with the wreck of a forage-cap. + 

His eyes remembered a darkness. + 

“Huh!” said Jake, + 

Sharply, “Where did you get it?” + 

The negro shrank. + 

“I was in de Crater, boss,” he said with a dull + 

Stain in his voice. “You mebbe heard about us. + 

You mebbe heard of de Crater at Petersburg. + 

I doan’ like thinkin’ about it. You need a fiel’-han’?” + 

Jake thought for a moment. “Crater,” he said at last. + 

“Yuh, I heard about that Crater.” + 

The wind blew on, + 

Hurting his arm. “I wasn’t to there,” he said. + 

“I knew some boys that was there.” + 

The negro said, + 

“I’d work for my keep, boss, honest. I knows a team. + 

I knows how to work. I got hurt bad in de Crater + 

But I knows how to work a farm.” + 

He coughed and was dumb. + 

Jake looked at him as he might have looked at a horse, + 

Measuringly. + 

“I ain’t runnin’ a hospital,” + 

He said, in an aggrieved voice. “You was to the Crater. + 

I seen the way you colored folks farm down South. + 

It ain’t no way to farm. You ought to be et. + 

We’ll eat you up to the house when it’s mealin’-time. + 

I don’t know where we’ll sleep you. How do I know + 

You can work your keep?” + 

The negro said nothing at all. + 

His eyes had resumed their darkness. + 

“Huddup!” said Jake, + 

As the team swung round. + 

“Dat’s ploughin’!” the negro said. + 

Jake spat. “The woman’ll fix you a snack to eat + 

If you holler the house.” + 

The negro shook his head. + 

“I’ll wait till you’s done furrowin’, boss,” he said. + 

“Mebbe I kin help you unhitch when it’s time for dat.” + 

“Well,” said Jake, “I ain’t payin’ a hired man much.” + 

“Dey call me Spade,” said the negro. + 

The plough went on. + 

The negro watched it, cutting the furrow clean. + 

Jack Ellyat, an old cudgel in his fist, + 

Walked from the town, one day of melting ice, + 

Past fields still patched with old snow but warm in the sun, + 

His heart and mind being something like those fields.⁠ ⁠… + 

Behind him, in the town, the spangled flags + 

Still fluttered or hung limp for fallen Richmond, + 

And here or there, in corners, you could see + 

The burst firecracker-cases, rotten with rain, + 

The guttered stumps of torches flung away + 

And other odds and ends of celebration + 

Not yet swept up. + 

The old cannon in the Square + 

Still had a blackened mouth from its salutes, + 

The little boys would not be good all week + 

And everything wore airs of Monday morning.⁠ ⁠… + 

Jack Ellyat, remembering it all, + 

Was glad enough when he got past the houses + 

And could see nothing but the road ahead + 

Going up hills and down. + 

“It’s over now. + 

Finished for good. Well, I was part of it. + 

Well, it is over.” + 

When he reached the crest + 

Of the Long Hill, he paused and felt the wind + 

Blow on his face, and leaned upon his stick, + 

Gazing at troubled Spring. + 

He carried still + 

Wounds of a sort, some healed into the scars + 

And some that hardly would be healed awhile, + 

Being in stuff few surgeries can reach, + 

But he was well enough, although the wind + 

Felt colder than it had in other Springs. + 

“Oh, yes,” he thought, “I guess that I’m all right. + 

I guess I’m lucky. I remember once + 

Coming along this road with poor old Ned + 

Before they fired on Sumter. Well, it’s over. + 

I was a part of it.” + 

He flipped a stone + 

Down toward the hill and watched it strike and strike + 

And then lie quiet, while his mind recalled + 

The long, white, bloodless months of getting well + 

And the strange feel of first civilian clothes. + 

Well, that was over, too, and he was back, + 

And everybody knew he’d settled down, + 

Only he couldn’t stand it any more. + 

He had a picture of Melora’s face, + 

Dim with long looking-at, a carried image, + 

He tried to see it now, but it was faint. + 

He’d tried to find her but he couldn’t find her. + 

Couldn’t get any news while he was sick, + 

And then, at last, the news that they were gone⁠— + 

That and no more⁠—and nobody knew where. + 

He saw the clock upon the mantelpiece + 

Back in the house, ticking its fettered time + 

To fettered Phaëton. + 

“I’ll settle down. + 

I will forget. I’ll wear my riddled coat + 

Fourth of Julys and have boys gape at me. + 

I’ll drink and eat and sleep, marry a girl; + 

Be a good lawyer, wear the hunger out. + 

I hardly knew her. It was years ago. + 

Why should the hunger stay? A dozen men + 

Might find a dozen girls and lose them so + 

And never once think of it, but perhaps + 

As a dim fragrance, lost with their first youth, + 

A seashell in a box of cedarwood, + 

A silver mist that vanished with the day. + 

It was such years ago. She must have changed. + 

I know that I have changed. + 

We find such things + 

And lose them, and must live in spite of it. + 

Only a fool goes looking for the wind + 

That blew across his heartstrings yesterday, + 

Or breaks his hands in the obscure attempt + 

To dig the knotted roots of Time apart, + 

Hoping to resurrect the golden mask + 

Of the lost year inviolate from the ground. + 

Only a fool drives horses in the sky.” + 

And here he was, out walking on this road + 

For no more reason than a crazy yarn + 

Just heard, about some gipsy travellers + 

Going through towns and looking for a soldier. + 

And even and supposing it were she⁠ ⁠… + 

He saw Melora walking down from the wood + 

With the sun behind her, low in the western cloud. + 

He saw the long shadow that her slight body made. + 

The fetters fell like straws from the clock of time. + 

The horses moved from the gate. + 

This life, this burning, + 

This fictive war that is over, this toy death, + 

These were the pictures of Phaëton. + 

This is Phaëton. + 

He cast a final look down at the town, + 

Another at the fields still patched with snow. + 

The wind blew on his face. He moved away + 

Out toward the crossroads, where the wagons pass, + 

And when he got there, waited patiently + 

Under a windbreak of three twisted elms + 

Half-hidden from the road. + 

“Find her,” he said. + 

“I guess we’ll go back West then. Well, that’s that.” + 

The wind burned at his flesh. He let it burn, + 

Staring at a lost year. + 

So he perceived + 

A slow cart creaking up a slope of hill, + 

Drawn by a horse as gaunt as poverty + 

And driven by a woman with great eyes. + 

Edmund Ruffin, old Secessionist, + 

Firer of the first gun that rang against Sumter, + 

Walks in his garden now, in the evening-cool, + 

With a red, barred flag slung stiffly over one arm + 

And a silver-butted pistol in his right hand. + 

He has just heard of Lee’s surrender and Richmond’s fall + 

And his face is marble over his high black stock. + 

For a moment he walks there, smelling the scents of Spring, + 

A gentleman taking his ease, while the sun sinks down. + 

Now it is well-nigh sunken. He smiles with the close, + 

Dry smile of age. It is time. He unfolds the flag, + 

Cloaks it around his shoulders with neat, swift hands, + 

Cocks the pistol and points it straight at his heart. + 

The hammer falls, the dead man slumps to the ground. + 

The blood spurts out in the last light of the sun + 

Staining the red of the flag with more transient red. + 

The gaunt man, Abraham Lincoln, woke one morning + 

From a new dream that yet was an old dream + 

For he had known it many times before + 

And, usually, its coming prophesied + 

Important news of some sort, good or bad, + 

Though mostly good as he remembered it. + 

He had been standing on the shadowy deck + 

Of a black formless boat that moved away + 

From a dim bank, into wide, gushing waters⁠— + 

River or sea, but huge⁠—and as he stood, + 

The boat rushed into darkness like an arrow, + 

Gathering speed⁠—and as it rushed, he woke. + 

He found it odd enough to tell about + 

That day to various people, half in jest + 

And half in earnest⁠—well, it passed the time + 

And nearly everyone had some pet quirk, + 

Knocking on wood or never spilling salt, + 

Ladders or broken mirrors or a Friday, + 

And so he thought he might be left his boat, + 

Especially now, when he could breathe awhile + 

With Lee surrendered and the war stamped out + 

And the long work of binding up the wounds + 

Not yet begun⁠—although he had his plans + 

For that long healing, and would work them out + 

In spite of all the bitter-hearted fools + 

Who only thought of punishing the South + 

Now she was beaten. + 

But this boat of his. + 

He thought he had it. + 

“Johnston has surrendered. + 

It must be that, I guess⁠—for that’s about + 

The only news we’re waiting still to hear.” + 

He smiled a little, spoke of other things. + 

That afternoon he drove beside his wife + 

And talked with her about the days to come + 

With curious simplicity and peace. + 

Well, they were getting on, and when the end + 

Came to his term, he would not be distressed. + 

They would go back to Springfield, find a house, + 

Live peaceably and simply, see old friends, + 

Take a few cases every now and then. + 

Old Billy Herndon’s kept the practice up, + 

I guess he’ll sort of like to have me back. + 

We won’t be skimped, we’ll have enough to spend, + 

Enough to do⁠—we’ll have a quiet time, + 

A sort of Indian summer of our age. + 

He looked beyond the carriage, seeing it so, + 

Peace at the last, and rest. + 

They drove back to the White House, dressed and ate, + 

Went to the theatre in their flag-draped box. + 

The play was a good play, he liked the play, + 

Laughed at the jokes, laughed at the funny man + 

With the long, weeping whiskers. + 

The time passed. + 

The shot rang out. The crazy murderer + 

Leaped from the box, mouthed out his Latin phrase, + 

Brandished his foolish pistol and was gone. + 

Lincoln lay stricken in the flag-draped box. + 

Living but speechless. Now they lifted him + 

And bore him off. He lay some hours so. + 

Then the heart failed. The breath beat in the throat. + 

The black, formless vessel carried him away. + 

Sally, waiting at Appleton + 

On an autumn day of clear, bright sun, + 

Felt her heart and body begin to burn + 

As she hummed the lesson she had to learn. + 

“Yellow cornmeal and a jackass colt + 

And a door that swings on a broken bolt. + 

Comfort the old and pity the wise + 

And see your lover with open eyes. + 

Mend the broken and patch the frayed + 

And carry the sorrow undismayed + 

When your lover limps in the falling rain, + 

Never quite to be whole again. + 

Clear the nettle and plant the corn + 

And keep your body a hunting-horn. + 

Succor your love at fire and frost + 

When your lover remembers the blood he lost, + 

And break your hands on the hard-moved wheel + 

Till they are tougher than hands of steel, + 

Till the new grass grows on the barren plain + 

And the house is built from the dust again, + 

With thrift and love for the house and the chief, + 

A scone on the hob for the son of grief, + 

A knife in the ribs for the pleasant thief, + 

While the night and the river have memories⁠ ⁠…” + 

She stared at the future with equal eyes. + 

And yet, in her glance, there was something still + 

Not to be ground by Wingate will + 

Or under the honor of Elspeth’s name, + 

A dancing flicker that went and came + 

But did not falter for joy or grief + 

Or the years gone by with the blowing leaf. + 

—French Dupré with his alien grace + 

Always turning the buried ace. + 

French Dupré in his dancer’s pride, + 

Leading a reel with his stolen bride⁠— + 

She smiled a little and turned to see + 

A weed-grown path and a scarlet tree + 

And Wingate coming there, painfully. + 

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. + 

Spread over it the bloodstained flag of his song, + 

For the sun to bleach, the wind and the birds to tear, + 

The snow to cover over with a pure fleece + 

And the New England cloud to work upon + 

With the grey absolution of its slow, most lilac-smelling rain, + 

Until there is nothing there + 

That ever knew a master or a slave + 

Or, brooding on the symbol of a wrong, + 

Threw down the irons in the field of peace. + 

John Brown is dead, he will not come again, + 

A stray ghost-walker with a ghostly gun. + 

Let the strong metal rust + 

In the enclosing dust + 

And the consuming coal + 

That was the furious soul + 

And still like iron groans, + 

Anointed with the earth, + 

Grow colder than the stones + 

While the white roots of grass and little weeds + 

Suck the last hollow wildfire from the singing bones. + 

Bury the South together with this man, + 

Bury the bygone South. + 

Bury the minstrel with the honey-mouth, + 

Bury the broadsword virtues of the clan, + 

Bury the unmachined, the planters’ pride, + 

The courtesy and the bitter arrogance, + 

The pistol-hearted horsemen who could ride + 

Like jolly centaurs under the hot stars. + 

Bury the whip, bury the branding-bars, + 

Bury the unjust thing + 

That some tamed into mercy, being wise, + 

But could not starve the tiger from its eyes + 

Or make it feed where beasts of mercy feed. + 

Bury the fiddle-music and the dance, + 

The sick magnolias of the false romance + 

And all the chivalry that went to seed + 

Before its ripening. + 

And with these things, bury the purple dream + 

Of the America we have not been, + 

The tropic empire, seeking the warm sea, + 

The last foray of aristocracy + 

Based not on dollars or initiative + 

Or any blood for what that blood was worth + 

But on a certain code, a manner of birth, + 

A certain manner of knowing how to live, + 

The pastoral rebellion of the earth + 

Against machines, against the Age of Steam, + 

The Hamiltonian extremes against the Franklin mean, + 

The genius of the land + 

Against the metal hand, + 

The great, slave-driven bark, + 

Full-oared upon the dark, + 

With gilded figurehead, + 

With fetters for the crew + 

And spices for the few, + 

The passion that is dead, + 

The pomp we never knew, + 

Bury this, too. + 

Bury this destiny unmanifest, + 

This system broken underneath the test, + 

Beside John Brown and though he knows his enemy is there + 

He is too full of sleep at last to care. + 

He was a stone, this man who lies so still, + 

A stone flung from a sling against a wall, + 

A sacrificial instrument of kill, + 

A cold prayer hardened to a musket-ball: + 

And yet, he knew the uses of a hill, + 

And he must have his justice, after all. + 

He was a lover of certain pastoral things, + 

He had the shepherd’s gift. + 

When he walked at peace, when he drank from the watersprings, + 

His eyes would lift + 

To see God, robed in a glory, but sometimes, too, + 

Merely the sky, + 

Untroubled by wrath or angels, vacant and blue, + 

Vacant and high. + 

He knew not only doom but the shape of the land, + 

Reaping and sowing. + 

He could take a lump of any earth in his hand + 

And feel the growing. + 

He was a farmer, he didn’t think much of towns, + 

The wheels, the vastness. + 

He liked the wide fields, the yellows, the lonely browns, + 

The black ewe’s fastness. + 

Out of his body grows revolving steel, + 

Out of his body grows the spinning wheel + 

Made up of wheels, the new, mechanic birth, + 

No longer bound by toil + 

To the unsparing soil + 

Or the old furrow-line, + 

The great, metallic beast + 

Expanding West and East, + 

His heart a spinning coil, + 

His juices burning oil, + 

His body serpentine. + 

Out of John Brown’s strong sinews the tall skyscrapers grow, + 

Out of his heart the chanting buildings rise, + 

Rivet and girder, motor and dynamo, + 

Pillar of smoke by day and fire by night, + 

The steel-faced cities reaching at the skies, + 

The whole enormous and rotating cage + 

Hung with hard jewels of electric light, + 

Smoky with sorrow, black with splendor, dyed + 

Whiter than damask for a crystal bride + 

With metal suns, the engine-handed Age, + 

The genie we have raised to rule the earth, + 

Obsequious to our will + 

But servant-master still, + 

The tireless serf already half a god⁠— + 

Touch the familiar sod + 

Once, then gaze at the air + 

And see the portent there, + 

With eyes for once washed clear + 

Of worship and of fear: + 

There is its hunger, there its living thirst, + 

There is the beating of the tremendous heart + 

You cannot read for omens. + 

Stand apart + 

From the loud crowd and look upon the flame + 

Alone and steadfast, without praise or blame. + 

This is the monster and the sleeping queen + 

And both have roots struck deep in your own mind, + 

This is reality that you have seen, + 

This is reality that made you blind. + 

So, when the crowd gives tongue + 

And prophets, old or young, + 

Bawl out their strange despair + 

Or fall in worship there, + 

Let them applaud the image or condemn + 

But keep your distance and your soul from them, + 

And, if the heart within your breast must burst + 

Like a cracked crucible and pour its steel + 

White-hot before the white heat of the wheel, + 

Strive to recast once more + 

That attar of the ore + 

In the strong mold of pain + 

Till it is whole again, + 

And while the prophets shudder or adore + 

Before the flame, hoping it will give ear, + 

If you at last must have a word to say, + 

Say neither, in their way, + 

“It is a deadly magic and accursed,” + 

Nor “It is blest,” but only “It is here.” + 