Innocence Is like an Open Door

Watch me read
the poem as
a YouTube video.

Music: Goldberg Variations: Aria.
By Johann Sebastian Bach.
Performed by Kimiko Ishizaka at the Free Music Archive
under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.

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Innocence is like an open door:
Not safe, but requisite to being free.
Darlings of our rhetoric, we wonder,
Evil as the rest but for our words.
Perhaps we know what horrors are in store,
Even as we dream of what might be,
Needing, as we preach and teach and plunder,
Defenses that would Xanadu preserve.
Even so, the freedom we are for
Now stands for all a common legacy,
Called forth by masters tearing worlds asunder,
Embraced by slaves consumed with righteous hunger,
Destined to dispute those whom it serves.
All innocents must keep their hopes at sea,
Yearning for an ever-distant shore.