The Waiting Maine Man, Dead at Little Round Top, Near Gettysburg, July 1863

While waiting drearily on a dark, windy, cold afternoon in 1960 in a post office on Christopher Street, New York,

For something I did not believe in too much,

I thought-minglingly-of how some Maine man, rather unknown,

Waited in early July 1863, at Little Round Top, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania;

Waited and died; and so changed to another kind of waiting.

He waits, as we all do.

Waiting is so much.

Before 1863 there was waiting and since 1863 there has been waiting.

It is so necessary to know what the waiting is all about.

It may be said here that some of the Maine man’s Maine friends (the man I have written of) later charged.

Waiting and perhaps charging!-so much of that was around.

1863 is still waiting, and in its way is charging: for a year charges; time charges.

Little Round Top is busy.

The Maine man and his regimental friends are busy.

So often being busy looks like waiting.

We have been waiting to find out what the being busy in 1863 was about.

We are busy.

We shall find out.

Meaning, too, has been waiting and charging.

The ethics of 1863 has been insistent and will be found.

(Much of ethics-and-beauty’s power consists in the insisting on being found.)

Hail, O Maine man, at Little Round Top in early July 1863; we, too, like waiting and charging in behalf of the ethics that was insistent then-

Even as Lee retreated, with the Maine man dead, and Lee’s army quite safe, though distressfully travelling.