spring in the field

(a manifesto)

For more and many years, our
mothers brought us forth on this continent
in this body, conceived in coitus,
and dedicated to the procreation
so that all men are created.

All our lives we are engaged in a war
against death, testing whether our bodies,
or any corpus, so conceived and so dessicated,
can so long endure to be re-cremated.

We are met on a great manifest of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that mind,
as a final resting place for those who here
gave their genes so that body might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should strive.

But, in a larger sense, we can not ruminate
—we can not consume—we can not swallow—this ground.
The grave men, living and dead, who are buried here,
have constructed it, in this hour, far above our poor power
to add or subtract, multiply, and divide.

The field will little note, nor long remember
that we lay here, but it can never forget
that they rest here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished destiny
which they who lived here have so humbly understated.

It is rather for us to be here medicated
while the great questions asked before us
— that from these honored dead we take
evolved promotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion —

that we here highly resolve that this head
shall not have died in vain — that this body,
under new management, shall have a new birth of freedom —
and that government of the poets, by the poets,
for the poets, shall not perish from the earth.