Every Memorial Day, the lines of this poem interrupt my thoughts, popping in at odd moments as I watch my children jump in a pool or take a bite of a burger. In eighth grade, I had to memorize a poem from a photocopied packet of famous poems as part of an English assignment. In my fuzzy memory, I am sitting at our kitchen table while my mom makes dinner.

The first gathering of the Stalwarts was, of necessity, an intimate one. It had been far too long since the social business of politics had occurred under the supervision of Kate Chase. Mary Todd Lincoln being of a sour disposition, and unattractive besides, the great Washington salon of the war years had not been the White House, but the Chase residence.

My family secret goes back to 1994. My brother Danny was dying of AIDS in a lower Manhattan hospital. I was thirty-one and I’d been living in Israel since I’d moved there from New York in 1986. I hardly ever went back home. I didn’t go to New York to visit Danny in the hospital. I sent a few letters.