Winter afternoons, bored in math, I’d ask to go downstairs to talk with you, As if I knew exactly who you were. You had a corner office off the library And a job I never exactly understood, And a desk that was too small for you. The chin beard suggested There’d been a reenactment that weekend In one of those little towns You must have known so well – Quincy, Ottawa, Joliet, Alton, Galesburg. Their courthouse squares. Their schools. You were still coming back from What you’d gone away to become. We would have spoken of Lincoln. This was our connection, inevitable As the fact that you, born in Illinois And growing to his height, Would grow up to impersonate him. That he had once stood in the square Where families ate ice cream now, Their tongues flashing Pink and blue, Debating Douglass, Made that town mean something To me, even if all it meant was that That had happened there. It seemed to me that to you It must have meant even more. I thought you wanted to drag all that History out of books and bear it Into our world, to set it walking about In your actual bones, to confront us With the fact that he had actually lived, Had stood exactly that tall, Had said those words in that order. In doing so, you were making us Make a decision – we had to Either pretend with you That you were him, Or live on in our fallen world Where no one was that tall, That eloquent, that honest. Long before I learned that You were grooming boys like me For sex, I felt groomed by you For some other reason, some need That wouldn’t have gotten you arrested, But that I have a harder time Forgiving you for. Why was I sitting in your office Those long afternoons of senior year, When even the bullies had become becalmed And the school stood around us Like a dream done up in brick? Did you really care about my future, Which would mean, naturally, Leaving you and that town behind, Or did you just pretend to care The way you pretended to be him? I already felt the pull of the great world. I wanted to go out in space, You wanted to go back in time. We sat across from one another, Restless to leave ourselves behind. It was easier for you. The suit was hanging in your closet At home, the hat perched on the shelf. For me, the transformation Was invisible, internal. In college, I invited you to drive down To Bloomington to visit a seminar I was taking on Lincoln. I’d arranged it with the professor That he and I wouldn’t acknowledge you When you walked in In order to see if we could make A dozen football players and sorority girls Believe that all our talk of Lincoln Had conjured him, as if that Seminar was a séance And here he was, risen in the flesh, To tell us what we were Getting wrong. I can still see you, not him, walking in, Taking your hat off as if preparing to say Something solemn, then taking your seat At the seminar table and gazing With great interest through your pince-nez At the professor, who hadn’t ceased Talking about him. Him. Not you. But the football players who’d fallen asleep Over the pages of Herndon’s Life of Lincoln They hadn’t read, and the sorority girls Who said nothing all year Only to rouse themselves in the final weeks Of the semester in fear for their GPAs, Which was really the fear that Their fathers in Schaumburg and Barrington Would cancel their credit cards, Stared like children. No. Not children. Children Still believe. Stared Like undergrads who’ve given up Believing in anything But have no choice but to Believe their eyes. Only the professor and I knew it was you. You never once deceived me, George. How could you have? When I wrote, predictably, an elegy For Lincoln, I dedicated it to you Then sent it to you, as if you might use it To better imitate him, as if your goal All along had been to disappear totally Into what you could never really be, Could only approximate, the way They say two parallel lines will near And near one another forever But never touch. Had I known how much That poem would mean to you, I never would have written it. For years it yoked us together. It was the sole reason, when all other reasons Disintegrated, for you to write to me. You needed permission to republish it Somewhere, or you’d just gotten it framed. It meant to you what it could never Mean to me. I’d given it to you, It was yours, but you kept giving it Back, as if there was something Wrong with it that needed fixing. At the sesquicentennial of the debate, You invited me to read the poem. I hated how, having given it to you once, I had to give it back to you again, Even after I’d ceased believing in what it said. The older I got, the less impressed I was with your fidelity to him As it became clear to me You never needed Those glasses that folded So neatly at the bridge To see. It makes me tired thinking of the care You must have taken with the suits, The way you must have leaned Over the sink to shape the beard To match that harrowing photograph Gardner took in February 1865, The hairline crack in the glass Negative like a gunshot. The other day my brother called, Asked me was I sitting down. It was your last masquerade. I worried about family, only To be told that you’d been arrested For making child porn. While my brother and I were still talking, I pulled up the link he’d sent me And touched your face. In your mugshot you’re disheveled, Wearing a white t-shirt. No pince-nez, no top hat, no overcoat. Just the beard, bright white, The same white as the white of the t-shirt. The police report tells me You’re sixty-three, Which means you’ve outlived him By seven years. You couldn’t quit, could you? Having spent your life becoming him, Becoming him has become who you are. Perhaps you thought of yourself As the Lincoln who survived, Or, better yet, as the Lincoln Who had nothing to survive, Booth slinking back down the stairs To stand in the back of the dark theater, Watching the play. I scrolled down to the bottom Of the article, found The predictable comments: “Dishonest Abe.” “Four score and seven years in prison.” “Try emancipating yourself.” Seeing the headline, They take heart in knowing There is at least one person on earth They’re better than. Me? I see you in your house In the middle of the night, Your wife lying in the sweet Stupidity of sleep. You’re wearing your glasses. Yours. In the lenses, the same boy doubled As if he weren’t enough.
The Impersonator
The Impersonator
Winter afternoons, bored in math, I’d ask to go downstairs to talk with you, As if I knew exactly who you were. You had a corner office off the library And a job I never exactly understood, And a desk that was too small for you. The chin beard suggested There’d been a reenactment that weekend In one of those little towns You must have known so well – Quincy, Ottawa, Joliet, Alton, Galesburg. Their courthouse squares. Their schools. You were still coming back from What you’d gone away to become. We would have spoken of Lincoln. This was our connection, inevitable As the fact that you, born in Illinois And growing to his height, Would grow up to impersonate him. That he had once stood in the square Where families ate ice cream now, Their tongues flashing Pink and blue, Debating Douglass, Made that town mean something To me, even if all it meant was that That had happened there. It seemed to me that to you It must have meant even more. I thought you wanted to drag all that History out of books and bear it Into our world, to set it walking about In your actual bones, to confront us With the fact that he had actually lived, Had stood exactly that tall, Had said those words in that order. In doing so, you were making us Make a decision – we had to Either pretend with you That you were him, Or live on in our fallen world Where no one was that tall, That eloquent, that honest. Long before I learned that You were grooming boys like me For sex, I felt groomed by you For some other reason, some need That wouldn’t have gotten you arrested, But that I have a harder time Forgiving you for. Why was I sitting in your office Those long afternoons of senior year, When even the bullies had become becalmed And the school stood around us Like a dream done up in brick? Did you really care about my future, Which would mean, naturally, Leaving you and that town behind, Or did you just pretend to care The way you pretended to be him? I already felt the pull of the great world. I wanted to go out in space, You wanted to go back in time. We sat across from one another, Restless to leave ourselves behind. It was easier for you. The suit was hanging in your closet At home, the hat perched on the shelf. For me, the transformation Was invisible, internal. In college, I invited you to drive down To Bloomington to visit a seminar I was taking on Lincoln. I’d arranged it with the professor That he and I wouldn’t acknowledge you When you walked in In order to see if we could make A dozen football players and sorority girls Believe that all our talk of Lincoln Had conjured him, as if that Seminar was a séance And here he was, risen in the flesh, To tell us what we were Getting wrong. I can still see you, not him, walking in, Taking your hat off as if preparing to say Something solemn, then taking your seat At the seminar table and gazing With great interest through your pince-nez At the professor, who hadn’t ceased Talking about him. Him. Not you. But the football players who’d fallen asleep Over the pages of Herndon’s Life of Lincoln They hadn’t read, and the sorority girls Who said nothing all year Only to rouse themselves in the final weeks Of the semester in fear for their GPAs, Which was really the fear that Their fathers in Schaumburg and Barrington Would cancel their credit cards, Stared like children. No. Not children. Children Still believe. Stared Like undergrads who’ve given up Believing in anything But have no choice but to Believe their eyes. Only the professor and I knew it was you. You never once deceived me, George. How could you have? When I wrote, predictably, an elegy For Lincoln, I dedicated it to you Then sent it to you, as if you might use it To better imitate him, as if your goal All along had been to disappear totally Into what you could never really be, Could only approximate, the way They say two parallel lines will near And near one another forever But never touch. Had I known how much That poem would mean to you, I never would have written it. For years it yoked us together. It was the sole reason, when all other reasons Disintegrated, for you to write to me. You needed permission to republish it Somewhere, or you’d just gotten it framed. It meant to you what it could never Mean to me. I’d given it to you, It was yours, but you kept giving it Back, as if there was something Wrong with it that needed fixing. At the sesquicentennial of the debate, You invited me to read the poem. I hated how, having given it to you once, I had to give it back to you again, Even after I’d ceased believing in what it said. The older I got, the less impressed I was with your fidelity to him As it became clear to me You never needed Those glasses that folded So neatly at the bridge To see. It makes me tired thinking of the care You must have taken with the suits, The way you must have leaned Over the sink to shape the beard To match that harrowing photograph Gardner took in February 1865, The hairline crack in the glass Negative like a gunshot. The other day my brother called, Asked me was I sitting down. It was your last masquerade. I worried about family, only To be told that you’d been arrested For making child porn. While my brother and I were still talking, I pulled up the link he’d sent me And touched your face. In your mugshot you’re disheveled, Wearing a white t-shirt. No pince-nez, no top hat, no overcoat. Just the beard, bright white, The same white as the white of the t-shirt. The police report tells me You’re sixty-three, Which means you’ve outlived him By seven years. You couldn’t quit, could you? Having spent your life becoming him, Becoming him has become who you are. Perhaps you thought of yourself As the Lincoln who survived, Or, better yet, as the Lincoln Who had nothing to survive, Booth slinking back down the stairs To stand in the back of the dark theater, Watching the play. I scrolled down to the bottom Of the article, found The predictable comments: “Dishonest Abe.” “Four score and seven years in prison.” “Try emancipating yourself.” Seeing the headline, They take heart in knowing There is at least one person on earth They’re better than. Me? I see you in your house In the middle of the night, Your wife lying in the sweet Stupidity of sleep. You’re wearing your glasses. Yours. In the lenses, the same boy doubled As if he weren’t enough.