The cumbrous machine of guards and reports and orders,
“Respectfully submitted” … “I beg to state” …
“State of kitchen—good.” … “Food, quality of—quite good.” …
“Police of hospital—good except Ward 7” …
“Remarks—we have ninety-five cases of smallpox now.” …
“Remarks—as to general health of prisoners, fair.” …
“Remarks” … “Remarks” … “Respectfully submitted” …
Under this type are men who used to have hands
But the croaking wheels have respectfully submitted them
Into a void, embalmed them in mummy-cases,
With their chills and fever, their looks and plans of escape.
They called one “Shorty,” they called another “The Judge,”
One man wore the Virgin’s medal around his neck,
One had a broken nose and one was a liar,
“Respectfully submitted—” But, now and then,
A man or a scene escapes from the mummy-cases,
Like smoke escaping, blue smoke coiling into pictures,
Stare at those coils— and see in the hardened smoke,
The triple stockade of Andersonville the damned,
Where men corrupted like flies in their own dung
And the gangrened sick were black with smoke and their filth.
There were thirty thousand Federal soldiers there
Before the end of the war. A man called Wirtz,
A Swiss, half brute, half fool, and wholly a clod,
Commanded that camp of spectres. One reads what he did
And longs to hang him higher than Haman hung,
And then one reads what he said when he was tried
After the war—and sees the long, heavy face,
The dull fly buzzing stupidly in the trap,
The ignorant lead of the voice, saying and saying,
“Why, I did what I could, I was ordered to keep the jail.
Yes, I set up deadlines, sometimes chased men with dogs,
Put men in torturing stocks, killed this one and that,
Let the camp corrupt till it tainted the very guards
Who came there with mortal sickness.
But they were prisoners, they were dangerous men,
If a hundred died a day—how was it my fault?
I did my duty. I always reported the deaths.
I don’t see what I did different from other people.
I fought well at Seven Pines and was badly wounded.
I have witnesses here to tell you I’m a good man
And that I was really kind. I don’t understand.
I’m old. I’m sick. You’re going to hang me. Why?”
Crush out the fly with your thumb and wipe your hand,
You cannot crush the leaden, creaking machine,
The first endorsement, the paper on the desk
Referred by Adjutant Feeble to Captain Dull
For further information and his report.
Some men wish evil and accomplish it
But most men, when they work in that machine,
Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels.
The fault is no decisive, villainous knife
But the dull saw that is the routine mind.
Why, if a man lay dying on their desk
They’d do their best to help him, friend or foe,
But this is merely a respectfully
Submitted paper, properly endorsed
To be sent on and on, and gather blood.
Stare at the smoke again for a moment’s space
And see another live man in another prison.
A colored trooper named Woodson was on guard
In the prison at Newport News, one night around nine.
There was a gallery there, where the privy was,
But prisoners weren’t allowed in it after dark.
The colored soldier talked with the prisoners
At first, in a casual, more or less friendly way;
They tried to sell him breastpins and rings they had
And bothered him by wanting to go to the privy.
At last, he fired on a man
Who went in the gallery, but happened to miss him.
A lieutenant came down to ask the cause of the shot.
Woodson told him. A second prisoner went
On the same errand, a shadow slipping through shadows.
Woodson halted him twice but he kept on moving.
“There’s a man in the gallery now,” said the young lieutenant.
“Well, I reckon it’s one of the men makin’ water again,”
Said Woodson, uneasily. The lieutenant stiffened.
He was officer of the guard and orders were orders.
“Why don’t you use the bayonet on him?” he said.
Woodson jumped forward. The bayonet hunched and struck.
The man ran into the privy and fell like a log. …
A prisoner said “You’ve killed him dead,” in a voice.
“Yes, by God!” said Woodson, cleaning his bayonet,
“They buried us alive at Fort Pillow.”
The court
Found the sentry a trifle hasty, but on the whole
Within his instructions, the officer’s orders lawful;
One cannot dispute the court. And yet the man
Who went to the privy is inconveniently dead.
It seems an excessive judgment for going there.
The little pictures wreathe into smoke again.
The mummy-cases close upon the dark legion.
The papers are filed away. If they once were sent
To another court for some last word of review,
They are back again. It seems strange that such tidy files
Of correspondence respectfully submitted
Should be returned from God with no final endorsement.
The slow carts hitched along toward the place of exchange
Through a bleak wind. It was not a long wagon train,
Wagons and horses were too important to waste
On prisoners for exchange, if the men could march.
Many did march and some few died on the way
But more died up in the wagons, which was not odd.
If a man was too sick to walk, he was pretty sick.
They had been two days on the road. Jack Ellyat lay
Between a perishing giant from Illinois
Who raved that he was bailing a leaky boat
Out on the Lakes, and a slight, tubercular Jew
Who muttered like a sick duck when the wagon jounced.
Bailey marched. He still was able to march
But his skin hung on him. He hummed to the Weaver’s tune.
They got to the river at last. Jack Ellyat saw
A yellow stream and slow boats crossing the stream.
Bailey had helped him out. He was walking now
With his arm around Bailey’s neck. Their course was a crab’s.
The Jew was up and staring with shoe-button eyes
While his cough took him. The giant lay on a plank,
Some men were trying to lift him. The wind blew
Over a knife of frost and shook their rags.
The air was a thawing ice of most pure, clear gold.
They stared across the river and saw the flag
And the tall, blue soldiers walking in thick, warm coats
Like strong, big men who fed well. And then they cheered,
A dry thin cheer, pumped up from exhausted lungs
And yet with a metal vibrance. The bright flag flapped.
“I can smell ’em frying meat,” said the coughing Jew.
He sniffed, “Oh God, I hope it ain’t ham,” he
