Soldiers in the Yard

They sent us home when the soldiers came. The college where I had studied Latin and philosophy became a barracks. Men from New Hampshire and Connecticut slept in Massachusetts Hall, cooked their meals in the Yard, drilled where we had walked to lectures. When I returned after the siege lifted, the buildings smelled of smoke and unwashed men. Books were missing. But I could not resent the soldiers. They had traded their farms and shops for cold camps and uncertain futures. If they needed Harvard's walls more than I needed Cicero, so be it.