Thomas Jefferson

My wife is ill!

And I sit

waiting

for a quorum

Fast ride

his horse collapsed

Now he saddled walked

Borrowed a farmer’s

unbroken colt

To Richmond

Richmond How stop—

Arnold’s redcoats

there

III

Elk Hill destroyed—

Cornwallis

carried off 30 slaves

Jefferson:

Were it to give them freedom

he’d have done right

Latin and Greek

my tools

to understand

humanity

I rode horse

away from a monarch

to an enchanting

philosophy

The South of France

Roman temple

“simple and sublime”

Maria Cosway

harpist

on his mind

white column

and arch

To daughter Patsy: Read—

read Livy

No person full of work

was ever hysterical

Know music, history

dancing

(I calculate 14 to 1

in marriage

she will draw

a blockhead)

Science also

Patsy

VII

Agreed with Adams:

send spermaceti oil to Portugal

for their church candles

(light enough to banish mysteries?:

three are one and one is three

and yet the one not three

and the three not one)

and send salt fish

U.S. salt fish preferred

above all other

VIII

Jefferson of Patrick Henry

backwoods fiddler statesman:

“He spoke as Homer wrote”

Henry eyed our minister at Paris—

the Bill of Rights hassle—

“he remembers . . .

in splendor and dissipation

he thinks yet of bills of rights”

True, French frills and lace

for Jefferson, sword and belt

but follow the Court to Fontainebleau

he could not—

house rent would have left him

nothing to eat

. . .

He bowed to everyone he met

and talked with arms folded

He could be trimmed

by a two-month migraine

and yet

stand up

Dear Polly:

I said No—no frost

in Virginia—the strawberries

were safe

I’d have heard—I’m in that kind

of correspondence

with a young daughter—

if they were not

Now I must retract

I shrink from it

Political honors

“splendid torments”

“If one could establish

an absolute power

of silence over oneself”

When I set out for Monticello

(my grandchildren

will they know me?)

How are my young

chestnut trees—

XII

Hamilton and the bankers

would make my country Carthage

I am abandoning the rich—

their dinner parties—

I shall eat my simlins

with the class of science

or not at all

Next year the last of labors

among conflicting parties

Then my family

we shall sow our cabbages

together

XIII

Delicious flower

of the acacia

or rather

Mimosa Nilotica

from Mr. Lomax

XIV

Polly Jefferson, 8, had crossed

to father and sister in Paris

by way of London—Abigail

embraced her—Adams said

“in all my life I never saw

more charming child”

Death of Polly, 25,

Monticello

My harpsichord

my alabaster vase

and bridle bit

bound for Alexandria

Virginia

The good sea weather

of retirement

The drift and suck

and die-down of life

but there is land

XVI

These were my passions:

Monticello and the villa-temples

I passed on to carpenters

bricklayers what I knew

and to an Italian sculptor

how to turn a volute

on a pillar

You may approach the campus rotunda

from lower to upper terrace

Cicero had levels

XVII

John Adams’ eyes

dimming

Tom Jefferson’s rheumatism

cantering

XVIII

Ah soon must Monticello be lost

to debts

and Jefferson himself

to death

XIX

Mind leaving, let body leave

Let dome live, spherical dome

and colonnade

Martha (Patsy) stay

“The Committee of Safety

must be warned”

Stay youth—Anne and Ellen

all my books, the bantams

and the seeds of the senega root

Copyright Credit: Lorine Niedecker, “Thomas Jefferson” from Collected Works, edited by Jenny Penberthy, Copyright © 2002 Regents of the University of California. Published by University of California Press.

Source: Collected Works (University of California Press, 2002)