R. E. Lee — 1807-1870

R. E. LEE _ 1807-1870 To Allen Tate Iced elms, cased in ice, The dead limbs of a dead harrowing, And The Captain on Traveller Faces southward. Greened in age The bronzed form interrupts the leafs Swift glide toward extinction. When all Are dispersed, a tardy snowfall Tassels the firm beard. Floodlights Are delusion, lighting without warmth, Beading that chilled shell. Marvel At that one, frozen in cold metal, Staring southward in wintry Virginia, One hundred years past his occasion! In our own seasonal agitation Gilded cars weave along the avenue Drumming the world to work. From fogged Panes faces gape, riding the bus. One lone gun, crammed with mortar, foretells The metallic processional. Maury, Jackson, Davis himself until, swerving, You pass the Captain. Do not look Upward. Past concrete, past stone, Below the dignity of their gaze, unseen, Proceed. Not elms but time has hidden them. Striking for work, you do not see Stuart himself, screening the Captain's flank. Who faced the Captain in that direction? Those who remembered him looking north Against the bayonets massed for war By a Providence of Machines. Their watch was his. In deadly pledge they raised their bloody hands. They were his sword; he did not let them fall Until their strength reddened a hundred thickets 374 Of blackjack oak, Virginia creeper. Pale rebels Among the dogwood stood to his calling. Those who by wretched campfire huddled For common grieving, turned him that way. They are all gone. The Captain on the horse Stands for them now, their blessedness and fears, Their lust and faith composed for scrutiny In that one stainless horseman, facing south. Dread hours in the Wilderness, canister, The quick brush aflame, April at Appomattox: Defeat. And Jackson storming on the left In love they wheeled that horseman round about And stood him there; "Demons out of the earth—" Who set him for a symbol of their kind. Wind in the elms, wind from the frigid north On a scattered and confused terrain of Now. Rememberless the land invites the steel, The asphalt lanes. Ice in Capitol Park Is filmed with smoke and grit of factories. Twelve miles west of Malvern Hill, the sound Of parking lot attendants, stripping gears. In a city of endless Reconstruction, Statutes alone throw shadows. What portents come, Remain unseen. Where death is air, Light in the sky, who is the foe? Assail the wind? Above the breath of exhaust Cold horsemen along Monument Avenue Rally to the air's assault on bronze. Jackson and Stuart facing north, and Lee: Seeing the long lines faint, the caissons burst, Richmond burning, the young Confederates dead, He rode off westward. They held an infant boy For blessing. Teach him he must deny himself, He said. Now, later than smoke, Later than civil war, the Captain stands High above the roofs and hardened elms, Hearing across the street the children's cries. —Louis D. Rubin 375 ...