Judith Henry, Judith Henry, they have…

Judith Henry, Judith Henry, they have moved you back at last, in doubt and confusion, to the little house where you know every knothole by heart. It is not safe, but now there is no place safe, you are between the artillery and the artillery, and the incessant noise comes to your dim ears like the sea-roar within a shell where you are lying. The walls of the house are riddled, the brown clock in the kitchen gouged by a bullet, a jar leaks red preserves on the cupboard shelf where the shell-splinter came and tore the cupboard apart. The casual guns do not look for you, Judith Henry, they find you in passing merely and touch you only a little, but the touch is enough to give your helpless body five sudden wounds and leave you helplessly dying.

Wingate gentled Black Whistle’s pawing With hand and wisdom and horseman’s play And listened anew to the bulldogs gnawing Their bone of iron, a mile away. There was a wood that a bonfire crowned With thick dark smoke without flame for neighbor, And the dull, monotonous, heavy sound Of a hill or a woman in too-long labor, But that was all for the Black Horse Troop And had been all since the day’s beginning, That stray boy beating his metal hoop And the tight-lipped wonder if they were winning.

Wainscott Bristol, behind his eyes, Was getting in bed with a sweet-toothed wench, Huger Shepley felt for his dice And Stuart Cazenove swore in French “Mille diables and Yankee blood! How long are we going to stick in the mud?” While a Cotter hummed with a mocking sigh, “ ‘If you want a good time, jine the cavalry!’ ” “Stuart’s in it, Wade Hampton’s in it.” “The Yanks’ll quit in another minute!” “General Beau’s just lost us!” “Steady!” “And he won’t find us until he’s ready!” “It must be two—we’ve been here since six.” “It’s Virginia up to her old-time tricks! They never did trust a Georgia man, But Georgia’ll fight while Virginia can!”

The restless talk was a simmering brew That made the horses restless too; They stamped and snuffled and pricked their ears— There were cheers, off somewhere—but which side’s cheers? Had the Yankees whipped? Were the Yankees breaking? The whole troop grumbled and wondered, aching For fighting or fleeing or fornicating Or anything else except this bored waiting.

An aide rode up on a sweating mare And they glowered at him with hostile stare. He had been in it and they had not. He had smelt the powder and heard the shot, And they hated his soul and his martial noise With the envious hate of little boys. Then “Yaaih! Yaaih!” —and Wingate felt The whole troop lift like a lifted dart And loosened the sabre at his belt, And felt his chest too small for his heart.

Curly Hatton was nothing any more But a dry throat and a pair of burnt black hands That held a hot gun he was always firing Though he no longer remembered why he fired. They ran up a cluttered hill and took hacked ground And held it for a while and fired for a while, And then the blue men came and they ran away, To go back, after a while, when the blue men ran. There was a riddled house and a crow in a tree, There was uneven ground. It was hard to run. The gun was heavy and hot. There once had been A person named Lucy and a flag and a star And a cane chair beside wistarias Where a nigger brought you a drink. These had ceased to exist. There was only very hot sun and being thirsty. Yells—crashings—screams from black lips—a dead, tattered crow In a tattered tree. There had once been a person named Lucy Who had had an importance. There was none of her now.

Up the hill again. Damn tired of running up hill. And then he found he couldn’t run any more, He had to fall down and be sick. Even that was hard, Because somebody near kept making a squealing noise— The dolefully nasty noise of a badly-hurt dog. It got on his nerves and he tried to say something to it, But it was he who made it, so he couldn’t stop it.

Jack Ellyat, going toward the battle again, Saw the other side of the hill where Curly was lying, Saw, for a little while, the two battered houses, The stuffed dead stretched in numb, disorderly postures, And heard for a while again that whining sound That made you want to duck, and feel queer if you did.

To him it was noise and smoke and the powder-taste And, once and again, through the smoke, for a moment seen, Small, monstrous pictures, gone through the brain like light, And yet forever bitten into the brain; A marsh, a monstrous arras of live and dead Still shaking under the thrust of the weaver’s hand, The crowd of a deadly fair. Then, orders again. And they were going away from the smoke once more.

The books say “Keyes’ brigade made a late and weak Demonstration in front of the Robinson house And then withdrew to the left, by flank, down Young’s Branch, Taking no further part in the day.” To Jack Ellyat It was a deadly fair in a burning field Where strange crowds rushed to and fro and strange drunkards lay Sprawled in a stupor deeper than wine or sleep, A whining noise you shrank from and wanted to duck at, And one dead cough left behind them in the tall grass With the slow blood sopping its clothes like the blood on a shot duck’s breast.