We Were There Poem by Clifton King

We were there in The Haight, flowers in our hair, beads around
our neck, doe eyed girls bared their breasts, brandished bras;
boys, not yet men, burned draft cards, numbers in the devil’s lottery, political punishment for being born.

We were there when napalm obliterated human decency,
burned babies in their mother’s arms,
denied innocence to those still in the womb.

We were there to see the oxidized eyes of dead
coming home in boxes draped in broken promises;
to hear dirges sung like lullabies, lyrics that languished,
lost graveside, names resurrected decades later,
etched on the headstone of history.

We were there, but turned away from that pile of bones,
left our failures to rot in rice paddies, in undefeated jungles.

We were there that Friday in Dallas, heard the shots,
saw everything, saw nothing, watched a nation’s dreams explode,
puddle on the hot pavement.

We were there when chants rose like prayers into the Memphis air, black and white, brothers at last, brothers at last,
then the angry retort of smoke and lead. Martin dead.

We were there at Kent State. Protest, Nixon, Cambodia,
open fire, fight back with your books.

We were there.
We survived. Today we think the same thoughts of the soul.