An Able Physiologist 1: Robin Pecknold Descends the Steps of Pennsylvania Hospital in 1786

… the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments—Benjamin Rush

Always down. On the marbled steps I refuse to sing like the bird

that is held in the cage it flew into, or made, and look back at the hospital:

how long it was, a thousand years before, I came and beat my breast

against bars erected to keep me safe, bars that predicted my arrival