Baker Brownell

From “In Barracks”

AMERICA in shuffling crowds

Pelted high-voiced goodbyes

Upon the ragged troop train.

Muddled sound of partings,

An accent here and there acute,

Popping, sudsy soap-sprays,

A girl’s bright dress, a frantic flag.

America, shuffling, clattering

To her high moment—

A swelter of faint calls,

Upraised civilian arms, and then

Curdy floculations of vague color—

Drifted about the boarded station-house,

Upholding it like an ark,

Ever more in the distance.

L Company drifted crankily down the track,

Entrained in hasty coupled cars

For mobilization,

And left there, behind, Democracy,

Slack Democracy on the station boards;

Left America clattering into emotion

And shuffling heterogeneously home.

“Emotional—not spiritual,” one said,

Who, with Company L, saw

A new America somewhere,

Waiting, unknowing the future.