When David Lehman set out to write a poem marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, he knew he had some great material to draw on—and not just two and a half centuries of history, literature, and ideas. He came upon the idea of using as many words as possible that actually appear in the Declaration of Independence. The aim was to “be true to the document," he says, "while also applying a kind of formal restraint."

The result is the “One People,” appearing for the first time below, in advance of the release of Declare: A Civic Gospel, from Arion Press and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, on July 4.

“We are in America, today and for some time, beset with problems of divisiveness. So the phrase ‘one people’ seemed to me a pregnant phrase, and one that would make an appeal not just descriptively but as a kind of prescription,” says Lehman.

After all, when emotions are running high, poetry finds its place.

Perhaps best known for his role as series editor of The Best American Poetry and for editing books such as The Oxford Book of American Poetry, Lehman notes that "people quite naturally and perhaps inevitably turn to poetry" in times of strife, pointing to the surge of interest in W.H. Auden after 9/11. “They wanted to find some meaning," he says, "something to grasp onto.” — Lily Rothman