Innocent

Innocent

“...I do know that when you do have a situation with a crowd throwing rocks and the National Guard is called in, that there is always the chance that it will escalate into the kind of tragedy that happened at Kent State. And if there’s one thing I’m personally committed to it’s this. I saw the pictures of those four youngsters in the Evening Star the day after the tragedy, and I vowed then that we were going to find methods that would be more effective to deal with these problems of violence—methods that would deal with those who would use force and violence and endanger others, but at the same time would not take the lives of innocent people.”

Richard M. Nixon
May 9, 1970

“From his early days in the Congress, through his tenure in the White House, and throughout the two decades that have passed since he left office, he remained a fierce advocate for freedom and democracy around the world.”

William J. Clinton
April 23, 1994

Journalists and politicians struggle
to speak only good.
It would be unseemly to kick him around
so soon after his death.

I remember well how, in that spring
when the ghosts of martyrs and the heat of youth
made us bold against injustice,
the word “innocent”
crushed a revolt not quite begun.

There would be no more pictures
of nice middle class white kids
slain by nice middle class white kids
in defense of freedom and democracy.

With a single word he sent
true revolutionaries underground,
the rest of us scurrying into self-loathing.
When morning came,
there were no innocent.

What he killed will not return to life,
but its ghost will bear us to our graves.
I wonder, are we made of better stuff today
than when he shined his cold light on us?