Bringing out one pair

he digs deeper

and brings out another pair.

Then into another pocket.

Out comes

three

four

five

six

seven

more pairs of gloves.

That was one time

if Mr. Lincoln had anything plenty of

it was gloves.

You and I may be sure Mr. Lincoln never in his life

felt sorry for himself about his gloves.

When he forgot his gloves

maybe he was too deep with remembering

men fighting, men dying, on consecrated ground.

Too deep with remembering

his hope

“Government of the people

by the people

for the people

shall not perish from the earth.”

And there is no good reason why you,

why I,

why we

should ever worry

about Mr. Lincoln and his gloves.

Journey and Oath*

When Abraham Lincoln received a bullet in the head and was taken to the Peterson house across the street,

He passed on and was swathed in emulsions and prepared for a journey to New York, Niagara, across Ohio, Indiana, back to Illinois—

As he lay looking life-like yet not saying a word,

Lay portentous and silent under a glass cover,

Lay with oracular lips still as a winter leaf,

Lay deaf to the drums of regiments coming and going,

Lay blind to the weaving causes of work or war or peace,

Lay as an inextinguishable symbol of toil, thought, sacrifice—

There was an oath in the heart of this man and that:

By God, I’ll go as a Man;

When my time comes I’ll be ready.

I shall keep the faith that nothing

is impossible with man, that one

or two illusions are good as money.

By God, I’ll be true to Man

As against hog, louse, fox, snake, wolf,

As against these and their counterparts

in the breast of Man.

By God, I’ll fight for Man

As against famine, flood, storm,

As against crop gambling, job gambling,

As against bootlickers on the left hand,

As against bloodsuckers on the right hand,

As against the cannibalism of the exploitation

of man by man,

As against insecurity of the sanctities of

human life.

1915

Untitled*

Paint his head against lavender shadows.

Fling stars around howsoever you choose.

The wing tips of birds circling sunset

Arches of measureless fading gates.

Put in mystery without end.

This man was mystery.

And yet at the end of your hands technique

Of fixing mystery around a head,

Let up on the mystery. Mix in among the

Lavender shadows the gorilla far back

And the jungle cry of readiness for death

Or struggle—and the clean breeds who live on

In the underbrush. Mix in farther back yet

Breeds out of the slime of the sea.

Put in a high green of a restless sea.

Insinuate chlorine and mystic salts,

The make-up of vertebrates,

The long highway of mammals who chew

Their victims and feed their children

From milk at a breast. Let him cry from silence

How the fathers and the women went hungry

And battled hunger and tore each other’s jugulars