our time has seen that
impulse going to war – seen
the circle complete
North and South they assembled, one cry and the other cry,
And both are ghosts to us now, old drums hung up on a wall,
But they were the first hot wave of youth too-ready to die,
And they went to war with an air, as if they went to a ball.
Dress-uniform boys who rubbed their buttons brighter than gold,
And gave them to girls for flowers and raspberry-lemonade,
Unused to the sick fatigue, the route-march made in the cold,
The stink of the fever camps, the tarnish rotting the blade.
We in our time have seen that impulse going to war
And how that impulse is dealt with. We have seen the circle complete.
The ripe wheat wasted like trash between the fool and the whore.
We cannot praise again that anger of the ripe wheat.
This we have seen as well, distorted and half-forgotten
In what came before and after, where the blind went leading the blind,
The first swift rising of youth before the symbols were rotten,
The price too much to pay, the payment haughty in kind.
So with these men and then. They were much like the men you know,
Under the beards and the strangeness of clothes with a different fit.
They wrote mush-notes to their girls and wondered how it would go,
Half-scared, half-fierce at the thought, but none yet ready to quit.
From John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benét, (Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1928).
That line there about the flowers.
About the flowers and raspberry lemonade.
Painting with words and scents and tastes in a way that anyone can feel it.
Not imagine it, but feel it.
The cool glass, the sweet liquid on the tongue, the smell of the flowers and pretty girls.
Back in the day when I worked in the Public Library I was cataloging a small collection of letters of one Byron Root Piece.
Dr. Pierce was a Dentist in Grand Rapids, Michigan back in the 1860’s.
I have always been attracted to Dr. Pierce as my Dad was also a Dentist from Grand Rapids, Michigan and ended up a Dentist in the Army of the United States in World War 2.
Dr. Pierce was also a captain of a militia company, the Valley City Light Guard and when Mr. Lincoln’s call for volunteers came, the company joined up and became part of the 3rd Michigan Volunteer Infantry.
Capt. Pierce served with distinction through the war with the Army of the Potomac and ended his career in the army as a Major General of Volunteers.
His grave in Fulton Street Cemetery in downtown Grand Rapids is marked with a small red flag with the two stars of a Major General.
He became a fixture of Decoration Day in Grand Rapids and he lived to the age of 95 and was Michigan’s last Civil War General when he died in 1924.
And I was transcribing letters written by him and too him during the Civil War.
The letters were mostly chatty and about nothing in particular.
Some gossip about Grand Rapids, some thoughts about life in the Army.
There was this one letter from General Pierce’s brother written sometime in the Spring of 1863.
The brother wrote the lines of, “Sorry you missed Sunday Dinner at Fathers. The dessert was Strawberry Shortcake. I did a double duty and ate yours for you.”
Understand this was written in the days before refrigerators or ice boxes.
The strawberries could not have been more than a day off the vine, if not picked that Sunday morning and still warm from the sunshine.
The biscuits could have been, might have been, hot out of the oven.
The cream was from cows milked that morning.
More than 100 years later, John Thorne would write about Strawberry Shortcake: “A bite of real strawberry shortcake is a mouthful of contrast. The rich, sweet cream, the tart juicy berries, and the sour, crumbly texture of hot biscuit all refuse to amalgam into a single flavor tone, but produce mouth-stimulating contrasts of flavor — hot and cold, soft and hard, sweet and tart, smooth and crumbly. The mouth is alert and enchanted at once.”
Painting with words that let you not just imagine it, but feel it.
Flowers and Raspberry Lemonade.
Strawberry Shortcake.
So then the contrast with the next stanzas of Mr. Benét’s poem can hit hard.
So with these men and then. They were much like the men you know.
Half-scared, half-fierce at the thought, but none yet ready to quit.
Painting with words that let you not just imagine it, but feel it.
Some thoughts on Memorial Day Weekend, 2024.
No Haiku For You 