Columbus, Ohio—April 29, 1865
People in the rotunda stood
around transfixed as the undertaker
unscrewed the walnut coffin
to make a slight adjustment
in the position of the body.
With eyes closed, eyebrows arched,
and mouth set in the slightest smile,
he lay on white quilted satin.
At the autopsy, he lay on planks,
across two trestles, as a doctor,
sawing the skull, removed the brain
down to the track of the ball,
then not finding it removed the rest.
Heavy rain washed over the train,
and bonfires lighted small towns
along the tracks. The war
had ended, but people only realized
what he meant to them
after he was dead. Six white horses
pulled the hearse—
built in Chinese pagoda–style—
before the throngs waiting
to say goodbye,
including thieves,
whose pockets bulged.
With guns firing, drums beating,
and soldiers treading a sad,
slow march, the great block letters—
LINCOLN—were unnecessary.
In the Capitol,
a plush carpet muffled
the shoe leather of visitors,
including the Colored Masons
and the Colored Benevolent
Association, who approached timidly.
The catafalque was
a low dais, covered
with moss and leaves,
exuding the same odor
as at the Soldiers’ Hospital,
where invalids had drenched
the street with lilac blooms,
which the hearse wheels
crushed. As the blood
drained from his body
through the jugular vein,
a chemical—force-pumped
into the thigh—hardened it
into marble. His face shaved,
except for a tuft at the chin,
and his brain—a soft gray
and white substance—
weighed and washed,
he was dressed in a low collar,
with a small black bow tie
and ivory kid gloves.
The black under his eyes
spread throughout his cheeks
but was not erased. There were relics:
death-bed sheets cut into squares,
locks of hair snipped,
wallpaper scraped with pocket
scissors, and the candle stub,
which doctors had held
lighted near his scalp.
Though Edwin Booth begged
for his brother’s body, it was sewn
into a tarpaulin, with a gun case
for a coffin, and buried under
a penitentiary’s brick floor.