Civil War Poems 4
Memorial Day, 1876
Towards the end of May
they thought they saw them
on the green knoll, draped in flags
that rippled in among the tombs
or billowed when chasing prancing women
forking hay up onto wagons from the fields,
and some were even seen crashing reunions,
carousing in picnic groves in June
to dance the wildest jigs they knew
with swarthy brazen belles who cried aloud
while being entwined in tattered bunting
that fluttered as they spun
from sturdy yellowish frames
of sound soldierly bones.
Memorial Day, 1876
Towards the end of May
they thought they saw them
on the green knoll, draped in flags
that rippled in among the tombs
or billowed when chasing prancing women
forking hay up onto wagons from the fields,
and some were even seen crashing reunions,
carousing in picnic groves in June
to dance the wildest jigs they knew
with swarthy brazen belles who cried aloud
while being entwined in tattered bunting
that fluttered as they spun
from sturdy yellowish frames
of sound soldierly bones.