Slight stiffening in the bodies of other men,
A few chopped ends of words scattered back and forth,
Eyes looking, hands busy in swift, well-accustomed gestures.
This is it. He felt his own hands moving like theirs
Though he was not telling them to. This is it. He felt
The old familiar tightness around his chest.
The man with the grass chewed his stalk a little too hard
And then suddenly spat it out. Jack Ellyat saw
Through the falling night, that slight, grey fringe that was war
Coming against them, not as it came in pictures
With a ruler-edge, but a crinkled and smudgy line
Like a child’s vague scrawl in soft crayon, but moving on
But with its little red handkerchiefs of flags
Sagging up and down, here and there. It was still quite far,
It was still like a toy attack—it was swallowed now
By a wood and came out larger with larger flags.
Their own guns on the crest were trying to break it up
—Smoking sand thrown into an ant-legged line—
But it still kept on—one fringe and another fringe
And another and— He lost them all for a moment
In a dip of ground. This is it, he thought with a parched
Mind. It’s a big one. They must be yelling all right
Though you can’t hear them. They’re going to do it this time,
Do it or bust—you can tell from the way they come—
I hope to Christ that the batteries do their job
When they get out of that dip. Hell, they’ve lost ’em now,
And they’re still coming. He heard a thin gnat-shrieking
“Hold your fire till they’re close enough, men!” The new lieutenant.
The new lieutenant looked thin. “Aw, go home,” he muttered,
“We’re no militia—What do you think we are?”
Then suddenly, down by his house, the low stone wall
Flashed and was instantly huge with a wall of smoke.
He was yelling now. He saw a red battleflag
Push through smoke like a prow and be blotted out
By smoke and flash. His heart knocked hard in his chest.
“Do it or bust,” he mumbled, holding his fire
While the rags of smoke blew off. He heard a thick chunk
Beside him, turned his head for a flicker of time.
The man who had chewed on the grass was injuredly trying
To rise on his knees, his face annoyed by a smile.
Then the blood poured over the smile and he crumpled up.
Ellyat stretched out a hand to touch him and felt the hand
Rasped by a file. He jerked back the hand and sucked it.
“Bastards,” he said in a minor and even voice.
All this had occurred, it seemed, in no time at all,
But when he turned back, the smoky slope of the hill
Was grey—and a staggering red advancing flag
And those same shouting strangers he knew so well,
No longer ants—but there—and stumblingly running—
And that high, shrill, hated keen piercing all the flat thunder.
His lips went back. He felt something swell in his chest
Like a huge, indocile bubble. “By God,” he said,
Loading and firing, “You’re not going to get this hill,
You’re not going to get this hill. By God, but you’re not!”
He saw one grey man spin like a crazy dancer
And another fall at his heels—but the hill kept growing them.
Something made him look toward his left. A yellow-fanged face
Was aiming a pistol over a chunk of rock.
He fired and the face went down like a broken pipe
While something hit him sharply and took his breath
“Get back, you suckers,” he croaked. “Get back there, you suckers!”
He wouldn’t have time to load now—they were too near.
He was up and screaming. He swung his gun like a club
Through a twilight full of bright stabbings, and felt it crash
On a thing that broke. He had no breath any more.
He had no thoughts. Then the blunt fist hit him again.
He was down in the grass and the black sheep of night ran over him …
That day, Melora Vilas sat by the spring
With her child in her arms and felt the warm wind blow
Ruffling the little pool that had shown two faces
Apart and then clung together for a brief while
As if the mouths had been silver and so fused there. …
The wind blew at the child’s shut fists but it could not open them.
The child slept well. The child was a strong, young child.
“Wind, you have blown the green leaf and the brown leaf
And in and out of my restless heart you blow,
Wakening me again. I had thought for a while
My heart was a child and could sleep like any child,
But now that the wind is warm, I remember my lover,
Must you blow all summer, warm wind?”
“Divide anew this once-divided flesh
Into twelve shares of mercy and on each
Bestow a fair and succourable child,
Yet, in full summer, when the ripened stalks
Bow in the wind like golden-headed men,
Under the sun, the shares will reunite
Into unmerciful and childless love.”
She thought again, “No, it’s not that, it’s not that,
I love my child with an L because he’s little,
I love my child with an S because he’s strong,
With an M because he’s mine. But I’m restless now.
We cut the heart on the tree but the bark’s grown back there.
I’ve got my half of the dime but I want his.
The winter-sleep is over.”
The shadows were longer now. The child waked and cried.
She rocked and hushed it, feeling the warm wind blow.
“I’ve got to find him,” she said.
About that time, the men rode up to the house
From the other way. Their horses were rough and wild.
There were a dozen of them and they came fast.
Bent should have been out in the woods but he had come down
To mend a split wagon-wheel. He was caught in the barn.
They couldn’t warn him in time, though John Vilas tried,
But they held John Vilas and started to search the place
While the younger children scuttled around like mice
Squeaking “It’s drafters, Mom—it’s the drafters again!”
Even then, if Bent had hidden under the hay
They might not have found him, being much pressed for time,
But perhaps he was tired of hiding. At any rate
When Melora reached the edge of the little clearing,
She saw them there and Bent there, up on a horse,
Her mother rigid as
