Monday 11th May ....From couriers who pass occasionally we learn that our forces are attacking the rebel position at Batoche, but until now with little success.
I chafe to go to war.
Still at the edge - we've come so far.
Those marches through ice and snow
Sledge rides in 35 below
The soldier who jumped off the train
(50 miles from Matawa - evidently insane)
was the only who fled this fight.
The rest prepared: victory or a burial site.
Waiting, imagining, is the worst.
Few soldiers die unrehearsed.
* * *
In Our Defense
Yesterday we rained bullets on the Northcote.
A diversion, while Ferryman Alex Fisher
and Pascal Montour awaited the signal.
(The army had reinforced the sides of the steamer
with choice articles like Gabriel's pool table.)
We knocked the mast and smokestacks loose
By flexing the Batoche ferry cable.
It drifted away like a wing-shot duck.
That was yesterday's good luck.
We shot at their camp through the night.
Every ten minutes, a warning to sleep light.
Today Middleton shells the town.
Still we are dug in, they gain no ground.
1 comment:
I'm really enjoying these poems, Andie.
I'm assuming the two different sections are different narrators, is that right? It seemed much more obvious in the earlier poems. If that's the case now, is there a way to make that more clear for those of us who don't know which side Middleton and Montour are on? (Maybe bringing in more obviously Aboriginal or Euro references?) Just a thought.
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