Poems about Robert F. Kennedy

Robert Lowell wrote a couple of poems about Robert F. Kennedy.

For Robert Kennedy 1925-68

Here in my workroom, in its listlessness

of Vacancy, like the old townhouse one shut for summer,

airtight and sheeted from the sun and smog,

far from the hornet yatter of his gang--

is loneliness, a thin smoke threat of vital

air. But what will anyone teach you now?

Doom was woven in your nerves, your shirt,

woven in the great clan; they too were loyal,

and you too were loyal to them, to death.

For them like a prince, you daily left your tower

to walk through dirt in your best cloth. Untouched,

alone in my Plutarchan bubble, I miss

you, you out of Plutarch, made by hand--

forever approaching our maturity.

 

For Robert Kennedy 2

How they hated to leave the unpremeditated

gesture of their life--the Irish in black, three rows

ranked for the future photograph, the Holy Name,

fiercely believed in then, then later held to

perhaps more fiercely in their unbelief...

We were refreshed when you wisecracked through the guests,

usually somewhat woodenly, hoarsely dry...

Who would believe the nesting, sexing tree swallow

would dive for eye and brain--this handbreadth insect,

navy butterfly, the harbinger of rain,

changed to a danger in the twilight? Will we

swat out the birds as ruthlessly as flies?...

God haunts us. Who has seen him, who will judge this killer,

his guiltless liver, kidneys, fingertips and phallus?