When first his public life began
With household name and well-known look,
I thought for such a sinner man
Inheritance was all it took
To get himself a Senate seat
Though tossed from Harvard as a cheat.
In several years he hit his stride
By loss, the family’s patriarch,
His Massachusetts cares beside,
He made the nation’s health his mark.
Then Mary Jo Kopechne drowned
At Chappaquiddick, Ted around . . .
. . . although he left the scene and got
A misdemeanor sentence of
Two months suspended, not a lot,
In court, perhaps, but grounds thereof
His White House dreams he’d have no more
And spend his life as senator.
Thank God for that. For forty years
He also championed civil rights,
Campaign reform and as time nears
One hopes the edge in health-care fights
To finish up what he’d begun
As epitaph for Arlington.
He joins both John and Bobby there,
The Kennedy who bore their lore
Not only as dynastic heir.
The Senate heard its lion roar.
A sort of sinner man who brings
The world so many saintly things.
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