The Lincoln We Knew Poem by James Gibbons

People were weeping
in the White House.
His steps echoed down the hall,
past the red and green rooms.
A bier, an open coffin,
who died here?

Soft footsteps among the leaves,
that short walk to the speaker's podium,
where and when enshrined in time
an eloquence delivered
expressing a fierce determination
and a gentle compassion
for those consumed by war,
both the living and the dead.

This loved man
whose life was taken;
a leaderless country
collectively wandering, lost,
strengthened by death.
As iron in the structure,
the structure of you and I
now put a right, saved!
A martyred man breathes
on that platform this very day.
His very words writ in his own blood
before his time was done.
And in repose he bequeathed
that all swords be sheathed
and let forgiveness fall upon the graves.