Andersonville Prison Camp, 1864
1. Day
Shanties jut from foot-churned clay
like upturned plowshares, thorns.
Scarecrow men with melon stomachs
stare through other men
as if through glass.
Some keep their sense of duty:
rations to gather
a letter to mail
a friend to take
to the deadhouse.
Letters are written, seldom sent;
the cost is more than most have left—
two dollars they'll ask, or else brass buttons.
And sometimes it's a private trick,
they'll make you cross that stick-rail fence,
then pick you off
with rifles.
Some prisoners don't know this yet;
some do
and cross the line.
2. Geese
Gliding over split-pine walls,
a stream divided
skims the fading sky,
its long fork tapered north.
The brazen cry
resounds for miles.
Mute faces rise,
salute the dying bugle,
and hearts drum
like the wings of
homing birds.
3. Night
There is always noise.
At least at night
the ball-and-chainers sleep,
those skeletons
yoked side by side
in parodied devotion.
The ball remains until
they die, or they're exchanged:
they all know which comes first.
Now they lie, a folded heap
of awkward spider angles,
limbs shackled to an iron body
stained with ruddy clay.
Night after night,
the harsh refrain:
Men beaten, robbed,
the new boys
stripped of all.
The others talk, and turn their heads away
to gaze at distant cities in the embers—
thankful that it isn't them,
this time.
Some laugh, some weep, some rage;
And others, somehow, sing.
The closest thing to silence
is the aching crackle
of a thousand meager fires,
which whisper in rare moments
when, as one, the voices hush.
Held tight beside the fire,
infested clothes are scalded clean.
Lice and chiggers lose their hold
and fall to flames:
with nowhere left to go,
the insects die.
4. Water
Asleep, stillness at last.
Men dream of extra rations,
hardtack, or a single peach.
They dream of wives, of
children, houses, lamplight.
They dream
of silence.
One sound alone
is welcome in their sleep—
a gentle patter, falling seeds,
life tapping barren clay.
It used to be
this thing was not so rare;
not caught in clothing,
wrung in battered pans,
not hoarded, fought for,
killing men with absence.
In that strange time, before,
so much was gentle.
Pools of silver spread
across the sleeping camp—
like mountain streams, like lakes,
like something they knew long ago,
another dream.
5. Relocation
They did not know,
when orders came
for their exchange,
that they rejoiced in lies
—if they rejoiced at all,
or only stood, gaunt statues,
no longer moved by blood or death,
half horrified by hope.
Their circled world
cracked open wide.
Once more, horizons spread.
Instead of just another wall,
North was that hill,
that patch of trees,
that union,
earth to sky.
That way lay home.
Holding one another
as if to keep from breaking,
the men filed out together
trailing rags like winding sheets.
