TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe. Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don't want him around. The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass. Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school. Joe takes a piece of carpenter's chalk, draws lines on the floor and piles stove wood to show where six regiments were slaughtered climbing a slope. "Here they went" and "Here they went," says Joe, and the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass. The two Swede boys go downstairs with a big blur of guns, men, and hills in their heads. They eat herring and potatoes and tell the family war is a wonder and soldiers are a wonder. One breaks out with a cry at supper: I wish we had a war now and I could be a soldier. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MIDSUMMER NIGHT by SARA TEASDALE THE TURNSTILE by WILLIAM BARNES THE SWORD AND THE SICKLE by WILLIAM BLAKE ON LIVING, FROM LIFE IS A DREAM by PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA SONNET: THE HUMAN SEASONS by JOHN KEATS LYRICS TO IANTHE (2). LAMENT by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR |