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Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all, That which is gendered in the wilderness From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness. Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream, Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream, Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave, Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire— Fire that freed the slave.

Manic-depressive Lincoln, national hero! How just and true that this great nation, being conceived In liberty by fugitives should find —Strange ways and plays of monstrous History— This Hamlet-type to be the President— This failure, this unwilling bridegroom, This tricky lawyer full of black despair— He grew a beard, becoming President, And took a shawl as if he guessed his role, Though with the beard he fled cartoonists’ blacks, And many laughed and were contemptuous, And some for four years spoke of killing him— He was a politician—of the heart!— He lived from hand to mouth in moral things! He understood quite well Grant’s drunkenness! It was for him, before Election Day, That at Cold Harbor Grant threw lives away In hopeless frontal attack against Lee’s breastworks! O how he was the Hamlet-man, and this, After a life of failure made him right, After he ran away on his wedding day, Writing a coward’s letter to his bride— How with his very failure, he out-tricked The florid Douglas and the abstract Davis, And all the vain men who, surrounding him, Smiled in their vanity and sought his place— Later, they made him out a prairie Christ To sate the need coarse in the national heart— His wife went insane, Mary Todd too often Bought herself dresses. And his child died. And he would not condemn young men to death For having slept, in weakness. And he spoke More than he knew and all that he had felt Between outrageous joy and black despair Before and after Gettysburg’s pure peak— He studied law, but knew in his own soul Despair’s anarchy, terror and error, —Instruments had to be taken from his office And from his bedroom in such days of horror, Because some saw that he might kill himself: When he was young, when he was middle-aged, How just and true was he, our national hero! Sometimes he could not go home to face his wife, Sometimes he wished to hurry or end his life! But do not be deceived. He did not win, And, it is plain, the South could never win (Despite the gifted Northern generals!) —Capitalismus is not mocked, O no! This stupid deity decided the War— In fact, the North and South were losers both: —Capitalismus won the Civil War— —Capitalismus won the Civil War, Yet, in the War’s cruel Colosseum, Some characters fulfilled their natures’ surds, Grant the drunkard, Lee the noble soldier, John Brown in whom the Bible soared and cried, Booth the unsuccessful Shakespearean, —Each in some freedom walked and knew himself, Then most of all when all the deities Mixed with their barbarous stupidity To make the rock, root, and rot of the war— “This is the way each only life becomes, Tossed on History’s ceaseless insane sums!”

To-day, O martyred chief, beneath the sun We would unveil thy form; to thee who won Th’applause of nations for thy soul sincere, A loving tribute we would offer here. ’T was thine not worlds to conquer, but men’s hearts; To change to balm the sting of slavery’s darts; In lowly charity thy joy to find, And open “gates of mercy on mankind.” And so they come, the freed, with grateful gift, From whose sad path the shadows thou didst lift. Eleven years have rolled their seasons round, Since its most tragic close thy life-work found. Yet through the vistas of the vanished days We see thee still, responsive to our gaze, As ever to thy country’s solemn needs. Not regal coronets, but princely deeds Were thy chaste diadem; of truer worth Thy modest virtues than the gems of earth. Stanch, honest, fervent in the purest cause, Truth was thy guide; her mandates were thy laws. Rare heroism, spirit-purity, The storied Spartan’s stern simplicity, Such moral strength as gleams like burnished gold Amid the doubt of men of weaker mould, Were thine. Called in thy country’s sorest hour, When brother knew not brother—mad for power— To guide the helm through bloody deeps of war, While distant nations gazed in anxious awe, Unflinching in the task, thou didst fulfill Thy mighty mission with a deathless will. Born to a destiny the most sublime, Thou wert, O Lincoln! in the march of time, God bade thee pause and bid the oppressed go free— Most glorious boon giv’n to humanity. While slavery ruled the land, what deeds were done? What tragedies enacted ’neath the sun! Her page is blurred with records of defeat, Of lives heroic lived in silence, meet For the world’s praise; of woe, despair and tears, The speechless agony of weary years. Thou utteredst the word, and Freedom fair Rang her sweet bells on the clear winter air; She waved her magic wand, and lo! from far A long procession came. With many a scar Their brows were wrinkled, in the bitter strife, Full many had said their sad farewell to life But on they hastened, free, their shackles gone; The aged, young,—e’en infancy was borne To offer unto thee loud paeans of praise,— Their happy tribute after saddest days. A race set free! The deed brought joy and light! It bade calm Justice from her sacred height, When faith and hope and courage slowly waned, Unfurl the stars and stripes, at last unstained! The nations rolled acclaim from sea to sea, And Heaven’s vault rang with Freedom’s harmony. The angels ’mid the amaranths must have hushed Their chanted cadences, as upward rushed The hymn sublime: and as the echoes pealed, God’s ceaseless benison the action sealed. As now we dedicate this shaft to thee, True champion! in all humility And solemn earnestness, we would erect A monument invisible, undecked, Save by our allied purpose to be true To Freedom’s loftiest precepts, so that through The fiercest contests we may walk secure, Fixed on foundations that may still endure, When granite shall have crumbled to decay, And generations passed from earth away. Exalted patriot! illustrious chief! Thy life’s immortal work compels belief. To-day in radiance thy virtues shine, And how can we a fitting garland twine? Thy crown most glorious to a ransomed race! High on our country’s scroll we fondly trace, In lines of fadeless light that softly blend, Emancipator, hero, martyr, friend! While Freedom may her holy sceptre claim, The world shall echo with Our Lincoln’s name.

He is gone, the strong base of the nation, The dove to his covet has fled; Ye heroes lament his privation, For Lincoln is dead. He is gone down, the sun of the Union, Like Phoebus, that sets in the west; The planet of peace and communion, Forever has gone to his rest. He is gone down from a world of commotion, No equal succeeds in his stead; His wonders extend with the ocean, Whose waves murmur, Lincoln is dead. He is gone and can ne’er be forgotten, Whose great deeds eternal shall bloom; When gold, pearls and diamonds are rotten, His deeds will break forth from the tomb. He is gone out of glory to glory, A smile with the tear may be shed, O, then let us tell the sweet story, Triumphantly, Lincoln is dead.

When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down To make a man to meet the mortal need. She took the tried clay of the common road— Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth, Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears; Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. Into the shape she breathed a flame to light That tender, tragic, ever-changing face. Here was a man to hold against the world, A man to match the mountains and the sea. The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; The smack and tang of elemental things; The rectitude and patience of the cliff; The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves; The friendly welcome of the wayside well; The courage of the bird that dares the sea; The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; The pity of the snow that hides all scars; The secrecy of streams that make their way Beneath the mountain to the rifted rock; The tolerance and equity of light That gives as freely to the shrinking flower As to the great oak flaring to the wind— To the grave’s low hill as to the Matterhorn That shoulders out the sky. Sprung from the West, He drank the valorous youth of a new world. The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul. His words were oaks in acorns; and his thoughts Were roots that firmly gripped the granite truth. Up from log cabin to the Capitol, One fire was on his spirit, one resolve— To send the keen ax to the root of wrong, Clearing a free way for the feet of God, The eyes of conscience testing every stroke, To make his deed the measure of a man. He built the rail-pile as he built the State, Pouring his splendid strength through every blow: The grip that swung the ax in Illinois Was on the pen that set a people free. So came the Captain with the mighty heart; And when the judgment thunders split the house, Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest, He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again The rafters of the Home.   He held his place— Held the long purpose like a growing tree— Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Against the backdark, bright riband flickers of heat lightning.    Nearer hills begin to show, to come clear as a hard, detached and glimmering brim against light lifting there.    And here, pitched over the braided arroyo choked with debris, a tent, its wan, cakey, road-rur color.    On the front stake, two green dragonflies, riding each other, pause, Look! cries the boy, running, the father behind him running too— and the canyon opening out in front of them its magisterial consequence, cramming vertiginous air down its throat— to snatch him from the scarp.

Line the wordcaves with panther skins, widen them, hide-to and hide-fro, sense-hither and sense-thither, give them courtyards, chambers, drop doors and wildnesses, parietal, and listen for their second and each time second and second tone.

My grandmothers were strong. They followed plows and bent to toil. They moved through fields sowing seed. They touched earth and grain grew. They were full of sturdiness and singing. My grandmothers were strong. My grandmothers are full of memories Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay With veins rolling roughly over quick hands They have many clean words to say. My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they?

There are charms that forestall harm. The house bristles with opportunities for stasis: refolding the linens along their creases, keeping the spoons and chairs in their right places. Nobody needs to witness one’s exquisite care with the napkins for the napkins to have been the act that made the fact unhappen.

Because this song’s made of the airwaves a time machine, you start to play the air guitar of memory, making a country so you can walk back into it, like a man on rewind in a silent film, his whiskey tumbler filling up again as he rises from his stool and steps backwards towards the avenue, where the cars, cabs, trucks reverse away from him, and the lights, for once, turn amber to green; where the two hands on his watch unravel time, like a maiden aunt unpicking a whole evening’s worth of knitting over the dropped stitch that means she must go back before she can go on. You raise the record from its sleeve again, hold it grail-like into the wayward light to read the liner notes on a life you’ve lived all wrong. Wind in the sycamores outside, rain coming down in a town you left behind and not this one, where the backward longing can strike you anytime — breath on the nape of your neck when you’re the only one in line, cat with a broken spine dragging itself off into the undergrowth to die. Where the silence might give way to a high-hat or snare drum, the lub-dub of the bass, a brass section. After a long absence, you take up the thread again, take up the line, what you listen for, try not to listen for, stirring the tiny hairs within your inner ear, weighting the wet tip of your tongue, like the scuff and fumble of the blind needle finding its way from silence to the first track on side one. You nod your head “yes.” You sing along. You tap the steering wheel of the car in which you pass under a strobe of stars, a quarter moon, until, despite yourself, you are sixteen again and walking home in a downpour with your Ken Dodd quiff, your flowers of sulfur, toward the box of records from which you’ll pick a tune to name the afternoon. Its scattered showers with a chance of sunny spells later, its gust and bluster from Rathlin to Cape Clear. This one would sound good in a stadium. It’s all guitar shimmer, tremolo arm, a chorus that staggers smitten toward the open bar. This one’s a plea, a paean on just six strings until the horns cut in, like the bully at a prom. It recalls the taste of cigarettes and bubblegum on the tongue of the first girl you ever kissed. All broken glass and bruised finger, its swoon circles forever the turntable in that blue room where you fed and watered every slight and scar. And so you’d like to thank the engineer, his assistant who provides the harmonies and made the tea; the trumpet player, his spit still wet in the mouth of a solo that the vinyl keeps pristine, black box recorder to your submerged plane. The singer with a bone stuck in her throat, which is another way to say “longing.” The producer, who fills in on Hammond organ. You could go on like this, lost in the noise again, in your baroque joy at what was and is, and what the words become, talking to yourself in the second person, as if you’re fooling anyone, reading the liner notes on a life you measure song by song.