A Memory of a Politician whose Silver Sword Always Shined
By
David Gottfried
Initially, Democrats wanted to hold the impeachment “trial” before Trump relinquished office. Mitch Mc Connell, pretending to be helpful, urged the Democrats to hold the trial after Trump vacated the White House. The Democrats, forever meekly being led to the slaughter, complied. After the trial commenced, Mitch and his fellow Republicans said that the impeachment could not proceed because Trump was no longer in office.
We suffer weak-willed and malleable Democrats, and Republicans whose character grotesquely fuses the spineless and the sinister, and I cannot help but think of a book about AIDS entitled, “And the band played On,” which chronicled the US government’s abject failure to do a goddamn thing to fight the epidemic and its starvation of research projects. Very simply, objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and complacent, fat, conservative men are always very much at rest.
I remember a politician who could not rest. A politician who followed Tennyson’s admonition to “never yield.” A politician who went to Mississippi and saw children with bloated bellies and whose outrage made him cross a Rubicon of sorts; who abandoned the traditional politics of his Irish Catholic family. I remember him likening America to Imperial Rome, vilifying our Vietnam policy as something which would make a desert but call it peace. I remember him, a candidate for President, who said that he did not want to be part of America if it were to continue to be a nation which would napalm and burn a third world country to keep in power men like South Vietnamese President Ky, who said that he admired Adolf Hitler.
I remember a politician who was stronger than any other man and sweeter than the softest woman.
(Likening his warmth to that of a woman might seem extreme, but I am thinking of a poem he recited, about an Irish freedom fighter, on St. Patrick’s Day 1964 in Scranton, Pa. The poem contained this stanza:
“Sagest in the council was he,
Kindest in the Hall,
Sure we never won a battle
-Twas Owen won them all
Soft as a woman's was your voice, Owen:
Bright was your eye,
Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen?
Why did you die?)
I remember Bobby Kennedy.
AND I HAVE BEEN IN LOVE WITH NIGHT EVER SINCE YOU DIED
By
David Gottfried
"When he shall die take him and cut him out into stars and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."
Robert Kennedy, quoting from Romeo and Juliet at the 1964 Democratic Convention
Lead me into war Bobby Kennedy
Lead me into that holiest of wars
Crashing into the gates of hell bloody and beautiful on a
Night satin ride of hating love
Like fires foresting through the hills and dales
In every mournful slum screaming for your sun.
The son of god
Of Jesus you were
You were Jesus Bobby Kennedy
And I have been in love with night ever since you died
I want to die with you Bobby Kennedy.
Caring not for the brain dead ways that they call calm,
I want to grab onto your car and never let go.
Going faster, faster as the spring sweeps its storms,
As Lucy's vengeful diamonds rain Tet's fire
on all our Souths of rice and cotton.
As the teaming, screaming colored kids dance in your waves
Calling sweetly, meekly, cryingly,
We loved you Bobby Kennedy
Of Caesar of Chavez of my Mark Antony
Of the Hot Roman Streets blinding the Night.
That merry mad catholic cacophony,
of Irish and Latins and Jews with a Hebrew Soul.
Of Subways singing all the way to Harlem and Nathan's
and Coney Island.
Of Knishes and Pizzas and Hot Dogs,
and we hope we didn't give you indigestion.
We loved you Bobby Kennedy
Of all the Strikes and Smokestacks of Aunt Rose
and Uncle Lou
Of all the tears of Jersey towns huddling to your death train
Of the Cities of the Summer streaming to your sight
Of the sad, sooted buildings billowing with your people
Of West Side Story and all the Marias who cried for you
Of how your brother, too, was killed by a white man
Of the aching heart that knows it is too coarse a thing to heal.
That cannot heal until it caresses you and tells you
We loved you Bobby Kennedy
Our Prince
Our knight
In Shining White Armour
Whose Golden Hair Glistened in the Sun
Whose sweet emanations gleamed like
Jackie's jewels
Our Sergeant Pepper careening on California waves,
You are John Lennon, you are Lord Byron
Shouting Sonnets at Chillon.
You are the man whom every good man wanted to be.
We loved you Bobby Kennedy
Copyright, David Gottfried, 1993