A volunteer, a Daughter of the Confederacy,
receives my
admission and points the way.
Here are
gray jackets with holes in them,
red sashes
with individual flourishes,
things soft
as flesh. Someone sewed
the gold
silk cord onto that gray sleeve
as if
embellishments
could keep a
man alive.
I have been
reading War and Peace,
and so the
particulars of combat
are on my
mind—the shouts and groans
of men and
boys, and the horses' cries
as they
fall, astonished at what
has happened
to them.
Blood on leaves,
blood on
grass, on snow; extravagant
beauty of
red. Smoke, dust of disturbed
earth; parch
and burn.
Who would
choose this for himself?
And yet the
terrible machinery
waited in
place. With psalters
in their
breast pockets, and gloves
knitted by
their sisters and sweethearts,
the men in
gray hurled themselves
out of the
trenches, and rushed against
blue. It was
what both sides
agreed to
do.
Jane Kenyon,
Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1996)
No comments:
Post a Comment