POEM
Of Lincoln
Of Lincoln we know next to
nothing, when we consider we have not
heard his voice. No turning black wheel
holds it, no radio wave nor
electronic bird’s wing carries
it. We know his oceanic beard, his
unrelieved profile, imagine
a certain habit of tenderness
born from disarming passion, but
he is not fixed in the cocked heart
which is our listening ear. Gunshots
blossom from tin moments, moss
grows on the cave painting
hieroglyph, fluency begrimed is hatred’s
lullaby, but the last trumpet note
blown in the sanctuary
is held by the hand that cups
it. “The mind is the standard of
the man,” said Dr. King, and we can
hear him saying it. The
standard demands that we reckon
the equation of feathers and bricks
and find both tons the same
though we know otherwise,
the blueprint of our monuments
calls for wooden wheels rocketing
over paving stones but this year,
pausing, we can learn
from the contents of a mouse-
chewed shoebox found in a Springfield
attic that Lincoln asked, defending, “Did
Greek hit him first?” and
that he himself staged a fight
for the benefit of the jury. If
sound is blazoned particles and matter
is moving, then this
paper wrested from the Shades
vibrates with a voice loud with field
smoke and pine song from its sojourn at
the stove pipe. And we again
imagine what it might have said to
us, and see the body like a feather
falling, and hear again the sound a light
thing owns when it hits.
Cynthia Zarin, “Of Lincoln” from Fire Lyric. Copyright © 1993 by Cynthia Zarin. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Source: Fire Lyric (1993)
