Fox’s Gap
Hill’s gray-clad division held the gap
for three hours. We attacked
again and again and finally pushed through
the North Carolinians behind
a stone wall, but at terrible cost.
Life spectra were slashed that day -
agglomerations of beauty and vivid
human-ness - that will probably never
be seen again so straitly configured.
We threw sixty confederate corpses
down Farmer Wise’s well, and
paid him $60 compensation.
I now know
that a human life
is worth exactly
$1.