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
