I wrote a little haiku titled The Springfields: Lead drips out of a burning farm rail. Their Civil War. Critics didn’t like it, said it was obscure— The title was the rifle both American sides bore, lead was its heavy bullet the Minié, which tore often wet with blood and sera into the farmyard timbers and forests of that era, wood that, burnt even now, might still re-melt and pour out runs of silvery ichor the size of wasted semen it had annulled before.   Subscribe to Quadrant magazine here…