Shippy, the little man with the sharp rat-eyes, Creeps into an old house in beleaguered Richmond And meets a woman dressed in severe black silk With a gentle voice, soft delicate useless hands, A calm, smooth, faded, handsome mask of a face And an incredible secret under her brooches. You would picture her with ivory crochet-needles Demurely tatting, demurely singing mild hymns To an old melodeon before a blurred mirror. She is to live in Richmond throughout the war, A Union spy, never caught, never once suspected, And when she dies, she dies with a shut prim mouth Locked on her mystery. Shippy is afraid. She gives him instructions, he tries to remember them. But his hands are sweating, his eyes creep around the floor. He is afraid of the rustle of the black silk. He wishes he were back in Pollet’s Hotel With Sophy, the chambermaid. The woman talks And he listens, while the woman looks through and through him,