He Sleeps Well

It’s clear to us that Lincoln will die

He wears the sheen of a much-rubbed lamp

It’s clear he never wore his hair grey

(“After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well: /Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,/Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, /Can touch him further.”)

“he looked ashen” the biography is always noting

It’s clear to us that The War was won only somewhat,

that the roots of chattel slavery remained in our soil

roots that may slumber

(“he that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache”)

It’s clear to us we are

a union, still, financially, geographically,

But we no longer romance “union”

(“We… like two artificial gods, /Have with our needles created both one flower,/Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,/ Both warbling of one song, both in one key, /As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,/ Had been incorporate. So we grow together,/ Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,/But yet an union in partition; /Two lovely berries moulded on one stem”)

Often I’ve read, “Let ’em go”

of Mississippi, Oklahoma,

Arkansas

See if they can live without us

It feels impossible to lose

Kids carrying a backpack with a teddy

“running away”

You can’t make it

You know:

I can’t make it

It’s clear to us that Lincoln should not go to the play

(“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, /That he should weep for her?”)

It was not clear to anyone

It wasn’t even clear to Booth

(“if the assassination/Could trammel up the consequence, and catch /With his surcease success; that but this blow /Might be the be-all and the end-all here”)

It wasn’t clear to the ushers at Ford’s Theater

who were glamourized by the

height of the president’s hat

Lincoln loved Shakespeare more than you do.

And “Macbeth,” the play defending shame,

laying out the case,

“Macbeth” worked for this man who made some hundred ton decisions

and lived under and through and past them

from 3/5 of a person

to 3.5 million people, “free”

for what it was worth

it was worth something.

Abe, seven years my elder

when all my cells are replaced

I could be Lincoln

then

Growing up, my sister was

so distressed to learn that Lincoln

was dead

Pennies were our purview, money, yes,

but so insignificant that we could slide

them into cracks just to see if they came out

somewhere else

We might have dime candy, or quarter candy,

but penny candy was history.

“At least we still have George Washington,” my

sister is reported to have said.

Family lore.

Lincoln is goodness and mercy.

(lacking the corpus that is habeas)

Lincoln is tough decisions

Lincoln is poster child of hindsight

Lincoln ended soon enough

to prevent bigger mistakes

To get those schools and parks

installing his name

Lincoln angelled for slavery

called for and by slavery

called out

voices in the wood

Lincoln, not touched by Confederate hands,

still,

only by lead

(He “Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye”)

He coulda been gunned down

on the train to DC

He coulda been nabbed

while on his way to or from

battlefield hospitals,

where Whitman worked,

and would remain

to keep writing “America”

Himself, Abe, would not have time for hospital.

Would have no need.

We watch the returning moving pictures

of Iran, cradle of civilization,

that damn cradle always crying,

our tyrant leader who chokes

on his own sneer, and

(“Where we are, There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood”)

his numbers, and a well-

kissed ass,

(“Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”)

“I’m fixing it!

I’m

fixing it!”

(“a heat-oppressed brain”?)

Lincoln, living in uncertainty

Leaving all the tabs open, Lincoln

Lincoln quiet, history

next to his bed

dream-ready

Lincoln who used to read barefoot

leaning on a stump

Lincoln who, although gangly,

handled a horse or an axe just fine,

thank you

You have some bad eggs, right?

Bad eggs get through?

I would pray to Lincoln,

were there a candle.

I am more fantastical than he,

who preferred a stoic Protestant mood.

I prefer him, a quiet spirit,

who liked to make people laugh,

to rise up in spirit in another

and for what is best in us

to be visible

again

It’s clear a Lincoln who lived

could live again