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Weekly Poem: Steve Scafidi Jr. reads ‘Portraits of Abraham Lincoln with Clouds for a Ceiling’

Poetry Apr 7, 2014 11:02 AM EDT

Steve Scafidi Jr. reads his poem “Portraits of Abraham Lincoln with Clouds for a Ceiling” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

Portraits of Abraham Lincoln with Clouds for a Ceiling

He could feel his pinky toe

push through the hole

in his sock, and a rash form

on his neck.

He saw a hawk falling from

a locust nearby, heard

a steam train cry far off.

He smelled the citrus

perfumes of the dignitaries

mixing with sweat.

Mostly through he listened

and bowed.

Not far below him under-

ground the leg bone of a boy

from Ohio, buckles, teeth

and rounds.

At the new cemetery

in Pennsylvania he waited

to speak, the low clouds

like the ceiling

of a church about to be

torn down or replaced

with light, the crowd

angry and somber,

the crowd pressing in,

the appointed speaker

talking too much

of Rome on and on

beside the bones of

the young laid down

before him. He sensed a hair

on his tongued, fiddled

with his ear a moment

and then rose to speak

while the sky cleared

and still continues

to clear — the blues

of the sky a consecration,

a testimony for this

new church founded

in Gettysburg, in hope

and two hundred and seventy-

two words shouted

over muddy earth

Steve Scafidi Jr.’s poem “Portraits of Abraham Lincoln with Clouds for a Ceiling” is published in “Lines in Long Array: A Civil War Commemoration: Poems and Photographs, Past and Present.” In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery commissioned 12 modern poets to reflect on our contemporary understanding of the war.

An earlier version of this article said the “National Poetry Gallery” instead of the “National Portrait Gallery.”

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