Evening already, and no reversals today
at the shambles of his desk or on the excursion
to Goshen his doctors sternly discourage,
but these hornets, snug in their cells as rounds
in a service revolver, oblige him to ascend
a rickety ladder, where he pauses to offer
a prayer against falling.  All month their buzz
has haunted him like so many Minié balls
searing the air.  He would prefer to bless them,
as even the smallest killing is now bitter,
but his dear wife is allergic to their stings.
From this vista he remembers Cold Harbor’s
blasted ground alive with groaning wounded,
and no still truce: that was Grant’s doing.
His post bellum mission is more cordial:
funding tactics, morale, textbooks, honor.
Students must learn to curtail their mischief:
whiskey, needling Freedmen, brandishing
pistols.  He will offer them the discipline
of chivalry.  All around him Lexington’s
verdure is going slowly autumnal.  The boys
now crossing the campus would protest
if they beheld him under the eave, unsteady
with memory in this devotional hour.
His heart, they all know, is no longer strong.

Lee to the rear, was their cry when he attempted
to see through the smoke and inched closer
to whistling shrapnel and the glint of steel.
Now, thorny hornets imperil the autumn air.
The hum from their paper bell is a litany.
A paroled soldier with no pardon in hand,
he steers an ideal, not an army.  Give them
Latin, he thinks, physics and journalism.
Vespa, vestigium, crepusculum, veni, vedi . . .
Teach the arts of peace.  To the west, the blue
ridges rise jagged as a field surgeon’s saw.

He has heard that slow music through bone
and tossed on his cot in agony.  Phantoms
await their orders.  Crown leaves on the oaks
simmer and turn.  The canopy is going gold.
Linen scraps on his torch might have served
as leggings that winter in Richmond’s trenches.
Poor Mary was desperate to feed them all.
These days she aches like a wounded trooper
but seldom complains.  For now, at least,
he can provide a warm hearth, a quiet parlor.

Pausing between prayers and labor, the general
surveys his campus.  The war is not here,
but again tonight he’ll hear ghosts lamenting.
Dignity, he thinks.  Sacrifice.  A gentleman’s
resolve, and yet those torn faces accuse him.
Pastor Pendleton, the old artillerist, is certain
it is thus with any shepherd.  Even Washington
must have been haunted, though he squired
a new country squalling into the bleeding world.
Fortune favors the bold.  Was that Aurelius?
The town’s steeples like holy bayonets impose
hard penance.  He must learn every name
and know the fate of each aspiring scholar.
A sentinel sensing his trespass darts back
to the hive.  They will come out like cavalry,
all noise and sabers, with no more mercy
than Hunter’s Federals overwhelming this
town.  All my fault, he said at Gettysburg
and half believes it still; the ladder trembles
as he remembers.  Then he hears Mildred
inside laughing with her cats, the creak
of planks under Mary’s rolling chair.
So many invalids to think of.  The toiling
sky is ominous, though the ever-lively
Agnes is eager to skate circles on the Maury.
He has jested that his visage could furnish
ample winter to transform the whole river.
What transformed him came slower: sally
forth and fall back, reform.  Bolster the flank,
bring Longstreet up fast.  Even fire is ice.
                   
A guidon slapping wind on Marye’s Heights,
the ghastly aspect of a boy blown by cannon
into a hickory.  Still bleeding.  Nothing fades.
If only reporters would cease asking, What if?,
plucking strands from poor Traveler’s tail
or seeing this weary survivor as the nemesis
of freedom.  He never aimed for a saint’s halo,
and choices like secession afflict him.  Negro
suffrage: he steadily wrestles that question,
but the night riders are his worst horror.
Can a nation or college mimic the phoenix
with a felon like him at large?  He confronts
his catechism daily:  honor, grace, obligation.

The ladder sways, and the struck match turns
infernal before his eyes.  Heat sears his brow.
as the old song comes back to him: the rivers
of sorrow shall not overflow.  The Wilderness,
Seven Days and Sharpsburg, even Chapultepec.
I must have faith the Great Father guides me.
The nest catches, flames tonguing, smoke
in a black billow.  In just a moment he sees
the house is in danger, a memory he knows
too well, and he shivers, but then the hissing
nest falls and rolls over the grass, a severed
head burning as the sun in the white pine
speaks its last spangles.  Out of heaven’s
blue, like lightning, something stuns him.
So this is what it feels like to bear the brunt.
Bewildered now, he winces, reels.  The rung
underfoot is ice.  He is falling and knows
he has been stung just as twilight tightens
and the church bell wrought from cannon
brass is rung.  The first strains of a hymn
for vespers whirl through the chapel and rise.
Blessing, or a new alarm?  No matter.  Faces
loom over him.  The torn voices soar.  His
ghosts are gathering to summon him home.