Monument to the Bush Years

Over the past several months, craftsmen on scaffolds hanging from the semi-circular wall surrounding the cavernous stairwell at the DuPont Metro station near downtown Washington, DC have been diligently carving a poem, which, if you crane your neck, you have just about enough time to read before the escalators descend into the darkness. They completed the project last week by carving "Walt Whitman, 1865" into the curving, gray, granite wall. President George W. Bush hasn't even left office yet, but in Washington, it's never too early to start building monuments:

"Thus in silence,
in dreams projections;
returning, resuming,
I thread my way
through the hospitals;
the hurt and the wounded
I pacify with soothing hand;
I sit by restless
all the dark night --
some are so young,
some suffer so much --
I recall the experience
sweet and sad. . ."

-- Walt Whitman, 1865