Speechlessness filled the room
Undermining careful thought
Many eyes settling finally on the one man there.
Journalists scribbled furiously
Sending the word a-flyin’.
Young ladies wrote the horrors down as gossip.
The man in the middle, the brazen one
Looked defiantly at the crowd as a whole
Finally settling down on the last row, that far right chair.
Sitting there was that one girl
That one girl who knew, and cared-
The one girl who he knew might save him.
That one girl had a mind of her own
As he sat there thinking his last
She thought about his speech, his stunning speech
The speech which had thrown the room as a whole
The speech which only she knew was not his
That one girl knew that he had copied and pasted,
He had torn up those old speeches that were gnarled
He had turned them into his final oration
That one girl knew speeches were strong
That a speaker could conquer the world
But she also knew, that day and that place
That he as a man was nothing but quotes
Quotes from his lord, quotes from his leaders,
But most of all he was quoting from her;
Her statements rung out in that courtroom that night
Throwing good people into a haze
But she was not the one who was speaking that night
The speaker was the one with whom she had shared.