The best stories always begin with I remember,

And there is one I never told you. I remember

Blue, yellow, striped, red, starred windy flags,

Paris or New York, where I had been in magazines,

And horns and drums all day and all night long.

In Somerville, where I had always been, always,

The College Avenue bells rang, not like Sunday.

I'd been sent to the store for a pound of sugar,

Toward noon, and toward thirteen, in November.

People I did not even know, and some I did,

Went stomping solemnly in a winding single file

Down the middle of the morning and the street,

A little left into the leaf-fall, a little right

Into the gutter, the bell-noise, the leaf-fall.

I remember they seemed to have nowhere to go,

But shouldered themselves away from, not toward.

I remember those people trying to march. Bells

Rang and banged. Someone would think of bells.

There were no flags. No one has the right flags ready

In Somerville, and we'd never had such a war,

So long, and the cold winters, and the influenza,

And why are the winters in wartime always so cold?

I joined the national snake-dance from Chapel Street

To the Hotel Woodbridge, but left to go to the store.

But it seems to me some of those people bore banners.