farewell to my Saint George

Last month, I lost my hero, George McGovern.  I've been trying to write a suitable eulogy for the past few weeks, and I just can't do it justice.  Lo and behold, we were assigned to write a poem submission about a significant historical figure for Creative English, and mine turned out fairly well (if you're a history geek, that is).  It's the best I've managed to come up with since his death, so I thought I ought to post it here in absence of anything else.  Sorry for the delay.

1972

The choice of the young to lead us

In so strange a time, which is now reborn                     

In troubles, if not in champions

For who since has ever compared, or even shone?

Whoever since has called us home?

Truly our first candidate in so many ways                                                                        

 To think Gays are people                                                                                                                            That women deserve freedom

The first to see the spirit of the land and its nature

The first and last to rebuff our blood bill of needless wars and aggression

I hope you died with as little fear as you lived

What was it about that year?  So many      

 Whom I’ve cheered and booed in the pages of musty tomes

After the peak of our glory, we have 72, the Siege Perilous from which you rose

Like our Galahad, to make the quest, to serve our great calling

And many others, great and terrible alike deserve memory, even as our great Launcelot lay dying in Texas! 

Humphrey- the Gawain, greatest of men yet blinded by vengeance

Wallace the scoundrel, vile as any Agravain, struck down ere it ended

Chisolm- another first, in her challenge, perhaps she most approached a Gareth

Muskie as our Bors- imperfect, but always the survivor- the strong knight

McCarthy, our Tristan, our dreamer, our poet

What higher praise can escape human lips, than that none of these compare with you?

But there were none to aid you and your troops

To be your herald and squire fell to an enigma

An enigma as flawed as myself, as sad as your daughter

I know the drill- the vain hiding of truth behind... nothing material

I know you did too, as you watched her die

And so it emerged- a danger, a lunatic

No more or less these things than me or mine

And you dropped him, to save the cause

And all that remained was our Bedivere, Shriver

Deserted and betrayed, you entered history

As my greatest hero, twenty years before my birth

But who since has dared?

Who has called us to our „higher planes“?

Who has acted with the just right, not the cautious restraint?

Who has shielded little children from bombers‘ reign?

Who has given voice to the workers?  The downtrodden?                                                               

 The oppressed, the poor, the farmers, the women? 

Who fought to feed the hungry? 

Who has sent food, not bombers?

Any who try to answer will see

Just how great this emptiness will be

There will never be another like my Saint George

Who called his country home, and then went down

                In the flames of defeat

And could it be any other way?  As if to answer, I hear you

                „From secrecy and deception in high places, Come Home, America

                From a conflict abroad which maims our ideals as well as our soldiers, Come Home,                                America

                From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, Come Home America

From the entrenchment of special privilege and tax favoritism, from the waste of idle hands to the joy of useful labor, from the prejudice of race and sex, from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick, Come Home, America!

Come Home to the affirmation that we have the dream.

Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward

Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world

And let us be joyful in the homecoming...  This land was made for you and me...

...This is the time“

As you enter Avalon, I will always be waiting for your return.

For the time to arrive when we may once more try to bring our country home