ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND
THE KETTLE DRUM
[There are places by the shovelful
and they are filled with people and
pickers and soldiers and sinners and
gents who work flat on their backs
and with derring-do they sit out
eternity with nothing to do dressed
in their finery their suits and last
dresses and clothes chosen by children
for the last of those caresses but there's
nothing to be done for they're crowding
the lawn and so many people have
passed us that the land of the dead is
ten-fold plus vaster than the mere acre
the living inhabit - Civil War Soldiers
cry with Mesopotamians and the
Chinamen scowl with Egyptians and
African princes accompany Finns and
Germans and Greeks and Hannibal
I see plays cards with Socrates and
Plato and there's nothing to be done:
'it drives me crazy all this crowding
and clamor' and all I ever wanted to
know was 'is there a graveyard for
vegetable pickers?' but instead they
said a mass for this guy out in the
fields and they threw some dirt on
his body as it was lowered into the
hole and the stalks covered and hid
the grave in secret and the foreman
had one less to count that night one
less bed was filled and he was short
a man I'd guess but even if he knew
what could he do because 'they fall
like flies in this Autumn heat' and
that's how I learned my lessons that's
how I figured it out - reading books
on the sloping lawns watching the
workers pick peppers looking at men
through their junkyard lenses figuring
out girls while the brilliant sunlight
shone through their slim dresses and
left evidence of (at the least) what
anatomy was and everything known
to mankind (I would think) was alive
in those fields for me to see and I saw
(benediction of self 'Veni Vidi Vici'
indeed) what I thought was Abraham
Lincoln in person going down for
his eternal flat rest still raw and
bleeding but at peace (at least once)
with himself - and the fastest growing
field is the field of the martyrs' yield.]
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