Private Lewis Dilly
He'd mustered into Company D.
At Gettysburg, the private
Four bullets
One hundred thirty seven years
That shattered boy
*Note: In the National Cememtery, Private Lewis Dilly's stone
came from Amity,
a town in Pennsylvania
just two hundred miles
from cannon
and from corpses.
His Captain, Silas Parker,
led his farmboys into battle
forking courage to his troops
like food he'd foraged.
in his woolen pants and shirt,
without a stripe or bit of gold,
had shouldered rifle
as he marched right to
catastrophe.
claimed his elbow,
scrotum, penis and his thigh.
He took a fortnight
with his manhood lost
until the flesh would die.
he lay in hallowed ground
that Lincoln once had rarified-
his name misspelled,
forgotten son,
and not a verse
to sing his stone.
with nothing
gave a crimson gift-
the bloody fields were sown.
It sings. It paves our dreams
with bits of bone.
in the Pennsylvania section is inscribed 'Pvt. Louis Dille'.
Next: 'Trostle Crop'
