President Kennedy

I heard a cry on the wind, The king is dead!
And stood amazed as all that I had known,
resplendent, like a many-coloured stone
smashed suddenly, fell in atoms down my head,
tokens of evil. As the pattern spread,
because I knew that nothing could atone –
not even anger – when my rage had gone,
I looked at what it was a gunman fled.

Because we trusted one American,
down darkened alleys we are left to grope
for vanished confidence.
Rock-firm he held,
who stood for safety and the rights of man
and something finer.
Blindly we may hope
the wind will shake a cobweb from the world.