Baker Brownell

From “In Barracks”

THE SHEET of the morning Tribune bent

With thin crashing and clutters of sound.

Tight hands held it; its fabric

Rattled in fragile catastrophe.

Sudden figures in the morning Tribune—

Three with sudden, significant being

Among slight marks by thousands

Strewing the page—raised themselves

In lustreless knobs, small, black, metallic,

Above the dim paper breadth.

A man, Woodby, saw three numerals

That rose in dull, significant lumps

From the creaking page of the Tribune.

His own number! carved

Of hard, stupid material they seemed.

Woodby, drafted man, left

His familiar papers, his thesis

On an unfinished and ancient past,

Forever, to learn the cold accuracy

Of near material, of steel, of half-ounce bullets.