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An American General Dies in Exile |
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| How wide everything came to look to him in his latter, private years. If a chronicle could be written-- but the memoirs lacked breadth. Wide, the way Kansas, state of sots and sod, had furnished him with width; the way the grassland had of growing out of eyes it helped feed. |
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| Here, gun-blue the sky, a Prussian blue, like half-starved cheeks shaken with ague--this country of funicular railheads, carved arabesques, postage-stamp forests. Often he would climb to the rooftop where the Jacobean chimneys thrust like muskets; the wind shook his ears, a roof slate dashed on the street, there was a clock tower and, beyond, a river and trees-- the glint and flash of a meandering world, carefully assembled as a timepiece. |
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Later, the concierge would scold (What? At your age? And suppose, four storeys down, mine Herr, you slipped, ach!), but he could only think about the wind, the unseen way it crested summits, flanked and outflanked, and never stopped or closed, quite, with what stood to oppose it. |
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And late afternoon, in his tiny room, allowed himself one bowl of soup, half a three-day loaf. He munched and thought of home and public life, victories and defeats from the dragging theater of an old man's wars. Some place a half-tied piece would flap, stiff clothes, weathered sign, lame door or shutter--"The wind, the wind," he'd mutter, shoving one more sop home, like a bullet down a muzzle, "I can't stop meddling with that damned wind." |
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And having dined, to leave or stay indoors? An overcoat, a coat, a vest, two shirts-- yet his hand shook from a worn cuff and papers fell; he was seized by reinless air, as though beyond invaded the room, and out and in were meaningless, mere sounds; and he could truly command them with much of the past, bad politics and campaigns, on a field only his sour breath claimed. |
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