Lincoln Memorial

On the steps   under the meditative gaze
in the white glaze of spotlights on marble,
(it could be snow    but the January night is blue
the obelisk rests in the icy reflecting pool)
            He looks down on us
the kindly stone head   seems to be caught
in act of transforming to   pure   white   cloud
Finished with our "gov'ment bizzness,"
Richard Gough of Chicago    and I
		(full of pad thai)
tramp  under the midnight's shallow moon
to the great square toed boot
My hand shakes and Richard looks out for the guard
         	As I fire up a joint
Here    on these steps     looking out
on the narrow pool towards the obelisk
with its red winking eye    toward the dome
aglow    like some stately mother ship
Marian Anderson (now dead)   her contralto wavering
sang This Is My Country    Here
(now dead) Martin King proclaimed his dream  And
in 1975   a year nearly abstract
Paul Kahill and I huddled against the January
chill and smoked a joint
the smoke and the vapor of our breaths
     	 identical
Those were the days of the close call
to think of them is to know
how many times we came close to dying—
how many died doing no more than what we did—
making two A. M. bar hops   across the river—
two last calls in one night—
					and dissipating
Our youth was never hopeful
We were the generation too lost to know it
though some of us went on to greatness
more of us stayed behind   happy not to go far
and all of us still are looking for
						 whatever
in our heightened  boozy   haze   we
thought Lincoln      had to offer us
The last time I saw Paul Kahill (dead now) he
was in such a drugged stupor
his wife led him through the stone
columns of his friends    No one thought
	to say goodbye
On Lincoln's right      across the river
        the thousands lay
their little white tablets, so geo-
metrically lined as to cause vertigo
			Presidents, and women
Men of all ages—all colors
and tongues and
Richard the Chicagoan said I want
to find a friend
			whose grave lies around here
To Lincoln's left
We walk pass Hart's vaguely passionate three
          so perfectly made to please    they are
GI Joe dolls   with no life scars   to the scar
          that is a Wall
black    rising from the ground    while the ground
falls before it      and falling again into the ground
          it is the process of the grave   a tomb-
stone    that sinks into the night
  	even under the lights   it is dark
(unseen from here, Lincoln
  	rises like the mist)
We look for the name of the boy    a year older than us
and find it on the granite
where it is too far above our heads     to touch
without awkward leaning       We do not touch it
We have done well enough, we
       of our little time who were
caught in some eddy from the not-so-great war—
too young to serve      too afraid not to
Yet in '75   somehow   free
(at least)    our lives were slow to move
some part of us continued circling what could have been.
	                Once the circling meant
something   Mr. Lincoln
                          before we were hooked
between the time when everything ended      and nothing
             had yet started
Paul Kahill and I     two lanky seventeen-year-olds
            finished the 880    against Culpepper   one
and two   Hardly a hair   separated us   our breaths so hard
and keen as bayonets    we were     ourselves
the best muscle Virginia could offer up    and
we were resigned to go
Breaking stride,
did I think this would be our finest moment?

NOTE 1: First published in Crab Orchard Review (Fall/Winter 1997) and reprinted in Under the Rock Umbrella: Contemporary American Poets from 1951-1977, William Walsh, editor, Mercer University Press in 2006.

NOTE 2: I have always admired Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead” for its rhythm, imagery of the Boston Common, and recounting of the story of Shaw’s 54^th Infantry. (Whenever in Boston, I try to visit Saint-Gauden’s Shaw Memorial.) Lowell’s poem, though, was not the inspiration for “Lincoln Memorial,” but rather an afterthought. The poem came about in spring of 1993 when I served on a panel for the National Endowment for the Arts. Richard Gage (his true name and how he is named in the original version), an arts administrator from Chicago, and I took a night-time walk on the National Mall. After reading the poem, Gage would say to me that he didn’t know we were smoking pot. We weren’t. But the poem reflects on a couple of times I drove with college buddies to the boot of Lincoln and fired up a joint. Richard did, however, ask to visit the Vietnam War Memorial to look for a friend’s name. I knew the way since I had lived in Metro-Washington and had visited the ‘the wall” many times.

For many years, I thought that I escaped service in the Vietnam War only because I had a high lottery number. Researching decades later, I realized that the last lottery, the one I thought I was in, was for men two years older than I. I was never in a lottery. Never in direct peril of war. Rural and ignorant of such matters, I would not have known to claim college exception or bone spurs. College would present itself later. Bone spurs never have. I am certain, I would have served if called. It was what was expected.

But I didn’t serve. I knew a number of people who did, but I was never called to that duty. I am grateful I was not, but at the same time there was in me—and perhaps still is—a survivor’s guilt. For many years—since seventh grade—I was anxiously anticipating war—and then took a turn toward a privilege, college, not granted to most people. The early years of college were directionless, full of seventies-era experimentation, but also full of void. This may not be too different from what happens to most young people who go off to college, but for me it also felt as if I had stepped off a cliff. Luckily, within a few years, I found my footing.

I did know a classmate named Paul Cahill, who died in a car wreck in 1978. The last time I saw him he was pretty stoned. I did not know him well enough to know what his feelings about the Vietnam War were, but in the poem, I imagine that he and I were high school athletes racing toward some finish line.

The poem is also influenced by James Dickey’s split line technique.

NOTE 3: Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial has always been an abstraction to me. I love the way it rises from the earth and then falls back into it. I love the reflective granite service. It brings the viewer into contemplation of self while looking at the names of the dead. It is both a tombstone and a post-modern sculpture that fosters contemplation and delight. I first saw it in 1982, a few weeks after it opened to the public and a couple of years before Frederick Hart’s addition was unveiled. I had followed the controversy about Lin’s design and the call from traditionalists that there had to be a figurative representation at the memorial. Though I appreciate the effort that Hart put into his design (it was the first representation of a black American on the Mall!), and I realize he was under pressure in a political controversy, I have always seen the Three Soldiers as a detriment rather than an enhancement to Lin’s design.

Traditionalists argued that Lin’s design emphasized the sorrow and shame of the War—but that is not true. The Wall emphasizes only itself, a reflective, angular wall. It is the people who visit the wall that bring emotion to it. They bring nostalgia, pride, sorrow, heroics and perhaps even happiness—each visitor engages with the wall individually as he or she relives memories of the person named on the wall whom he or she knew. There is no need for a figure to negotiate the viewer’s emotion. The emotion (or emotions) come with the viewer, is amplified by the viewer’s engagement with the wall, and then leaves with the viewer. I did not lose anyone in the Vietnam War, but I believe that for many viewers this experience is cathartic.

Well, what do y’all think?

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