Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
--Neil Young
There are many poems written about, in response to, and inspired by the slaughter of unarmed students by National Guard troops at Kent State University, fifty years ago today, on May 4, 1970. In fact Kent State now maintains an archive of such poems, and held a contest to generate more of them for this anniversary. But this lyric, wed to angry guitars in the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song "Ohio" is both pure and defining. Written, recorded and released immediately after media coverage of the killings, it became a generation's cry and now a generation's memory.
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