The Old Bills
How much better they were, the old bills—
Lincoln and Hamilton, Jackson and Grant,
steel-engraved faces, jabots and stocks,
high collars, wide lapels, and lips and eyes
as alive as those of a cornered mouse,
a killing precision in each spidery line
engraved with the fervor of a saint
going blind by the light of dying gods.
Now only Washington is still that way,
not milky and inflated and surrounded
by palely tinted anti-counterfeit
devices but plain in two greens, the gaze
unflinching in its oval, deadly and grave,
a nation-maker’s unrelenting glint
insisting that this note is legal tender,
demanding we redeem it with our blood.
—John Updike
About the Author
John Updike's many collections of poetry include Tossing and Turning, Facing Nature, and, most recently, Americana and Other Poems. He lives in Berverly Farms, Massachusetts.
