And began to break them quickly, first one by one,
Then a dozen together, then hard-cracking axe-helves breaking.
Ellyat was running. His mouth felt stiff with loud words
Though he heard no sound from his mouth. He could see the white
Fine pine-splinters flying from those invisible axe-helves. …
For a minute all of them were tangled together
In the bucking tent like fish in a canvas scoop,
Then they were out of it somehow—falling in line—
Bailey’s hair looked angry and sleepy. The officers
Were yelling the usual things that officers yelled.
It was a surprise. They were going to be licked again.
It did not matter yet. It would matter soon.
Bailey had lost his blouse and his pants weren’t buttoned.
He meant to tell Bailey about it. There wasn’t time.
His eyes felt bald as glass but that was because
He kept looking for flying pine-splinters in the air.
Now they were setting off firecrackers under a boiler
And a man ran past with one hand dripping red paint,
Holding the hand with his other hand and talking
As if the hurt hand were a doll. An officer hit him
With the flat of a sword. It spanked some dust from his coat
And the man’s face changed from a badly-fitting mask
Of terror, cut into ridges of sallow wax,
To something pink and annoyed, but he kept on running.
All this happened at once as they were moving.
The dawn had been hit to pieces with a hard mallet.
There were no fawns. There was an increasing noise
Through which he heard the lugubrious voice of Bailey
Singing off-key, like a hymn,
“When I was a weaver, I lived by myself,
And I worked at the weaver’s tra-a-de—”
The officers were barking like foxes now.
As the last tent dropped behind them, Ellyat saw
A red, puzzled face, looking out from under a tent-flap,
Like a bear from a cave. The face had been drunk last night,
And it stared at the end of the column with a huge and stupid wisdom.
“When I was a weaver, I lived by myself,
And I worked at the weaver’s trade—”
Jack Ellyat found himself back behind somebody’s tent
After a while. He had been out in the woods.
He remembered scrouging against a too-porous tree
For a day or a number of minutes while he jerked
A rattling ramrod up and down in a gun.
But they couldn’t stay in the woods—they had to come back.
They had called him “Bull Run Jack” but they had to come back,
Bailey and all the rest. He had come back with them,
But that was different—that was all right for him.
This red-colored clang of haste was different for him.
Bailey and all the rest could run where they liked.
He was an old soldier. He would stay here and fight.
Running, he tripped on a rope, and began to fall,
Bailey picked him back on his feet. “Did they get you, Bud?”
“No, they didn’t get me.” Ellyat’s voice was a snarl.
What business had Bailey steadying him like that?
He hadn’t been running. Suddenly he saw
Gray shouting strangers bursting into the tents
And his heart shrank up in a pea. “Oh hell,” he said,
Hopelessly ramming a cartridge. He was an old soldier.
He wasn’t going to run. He was going to act
Vast fictive heroisms in front of Bailey,
If they only gave him time, just a little time.
A huge horse rose above the wall of the tent
And hung there a second like a bad prodigy,
A frozen scream full of hoofs. He struck at its head
And tried to get out from under as it lunged down
But he wasn’t quite quick enough. As he slipped and fell
He saw the laughter pasted on Bailey’s face
But before he could hear the laugh, the horse had fallen,
Jarring the world. After blunt, sickly time
A fat young man with a little pink moustache
Was bawling “Hey, Yank, surrender!” into his ear
And nervously waving a pistol in front of his eyes.
He nodded weakly. “Hey, boys,” called the fat young man,
“I got two Yanks!” His mouth was childish with pleasure.
He was going to tell everybody he had two Yanks.
“Here, Yank, come and pull the horse off the other Yank.”
The prisoner’s column straggled along the road
All afternoon. Jack Ellyat marched in it numbly.
He was stiff and sore. They were going away from the battle
But they could still hear it, quaking,
The giant stones rolled over the grumbling bridge.
Some of the prisoners tried to joke with the guards,
Some walked in silence, some spoke out now and then,
As if to explain to the world why they were there.
One man said, “I got a sore heel.” Another said,
“All the same the Tenth Missouri’s a damn good regiment.”
Another said, “Listen, boys, don’t it beat all hell?
I left my tobacco behind me, back in the tent,
Don’t it beat all hell to lose your tobacco like that?”
Bailey kept humming the “Weaver,” but now and then
He broke it off, to say, with a queer satisfaction,
“Well, we surely did skedaddle—we surely did.”
Jack Ellyat had said nothing for a long time.
This was war, this was Phaëton, this was the bronze chariot
Rolling the sky. If he had a soul any more
It felt scrawny and thin as a sick turkey-poult.
It was not worth the trouble to fatten. He tried to fatten it
With various thoughts, now and then, but the thoughts were spoilt
Corn. They had damn well skedaddled. They damn well had.
That was all. The rest of the army could win or lose
They had surely skedaddled. They had been whipped again.
He had been whipped again. He was no longer
The old soldier—no longer even “Bull Run Jack.”
He had lost a piece of himself. It had ragged edges
That piece. He could see it left behind in the tents
Under a dirty coat and a slab of tobacco.
After a while he knocked against Bailey’s arm.
“Where are we going?” he said, in a shy voice.
Bailey laughed, not badly, “Well, Colonel, Corinth I guess,
Corinth first—and then some damn prison-camp.”
He spat in the road. “It won’t be good grub,” he said.
“Bacon and hominy-grits. They don’t eat right.
They don’t eat nothing but bacon and hominy-grits.
God, I’m goin’ to get tired of bacon and hominy-grits!”
Ellyat looked. There was something different about him.
He stated a fact. “You’ve buttoned your pants,” he
