The accused chose to plead innocent
because he was guilty. We allowed such a thing;
it was one of our greatnesses, nutty, protective.
On the car radio a survivor’s ordeal, a leg
amputated without anesthesia while trapped

under a steel girder. Simply, no big words—
that’s who people tell their horror stories.
I was elsewhere, on my way to a party.
On arrival, everyone was sure to be carrying
a piece of the awful world with him.

Not one of us wouldn’t be smiling.
There’d be drinks, irony, hidden animosities.
Something large would be missing.
But most of us would be understand
something large always would be missing.

Oklahoma City was America reduced
to McVeigh’s half-thought-out thoughts.
Did he know anything about suffering?
It’s the innocent among us who are guilty
of wondering if we’re moral agents or madmen

or merely, as one scientist said,
a fortuitous collocation of atoms.
Some mysteries can be solved by ampersands.
Ands not ors; that was my latest answer.
At the party two women were talking

about how strange it is that they still like men.
They were young and unavailable, and their lovely faces
evoked a world not wholly incongruent
with the world I know. I had no illusions, not even hopes,
that their beauty had anything to do with goodness.