The World Trade Center—David Lehman (1996)
I never liked the World Trade Center.
When it went up I talked it down
As did many other New Yorkers.
The twin towers were ugly monoliths
That lacked the details the ornament the character
Of the Empire State Building and especially
The Chrysler Building, everyone's favorite,
With its scalloped top, so noble.
The World Trade Center was an example of what was wrong
With American architecture,
And it stayed that way for twenty-five years
Until that Friday afternoon in February
When the bomb went off and the buildings became
A great symbol of America, like the Statue
Of Liberty at the end of Hitchcock's Saboteur.
My whole attitude toward the World Trade Center
Changed overnight. I began to like the way
It comes into view as you reach Sixth Avenue
From any side street, the way the tops
Of the towers dissolve into white skies
In the east when you cross the Hudson
Into the city across the George Washington Bridge.
History of the Airplane—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth when their wonderful
flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk into the kingdom of birds
but the parliament of birds was freaked out by this man-made bird
and fled to heaven
And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and
flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather
helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not
even though he circled Versailles
And then the famous Flying Clipper took off in the opposite
direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves
were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky
And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns
and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism
but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima
And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and
these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any
real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings
and like Icarus crash to earth
And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying
bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third
Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of
peace
And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st
century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and
stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating
heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no
parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part
of the scorched earth of the world
And a wind of ashes blows across the land
And for one long moment in eternity
There is chaos and despair
And buried loves and voices
Cries and whispers
Fill the air
Everywhere
The Names—BILLY COLLINS
This poem is dedicated to the victims of September 11 and to their survivors.
Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name -Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner -Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds -Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
September Twelfth, 2001—X.J. Kennedy
Two caught on film who hurtle
from the eighty-second floor,
choosing between a fireball
and to jump holding hands,
aren't us. I wake beside you,
stretch, scratch, taste the air,
the incredible joy of coffee
and the morning light.
Alive, we open eyelids
on our pitiful share of time,
we bubbles rising and bursting
in a boiling pot.
9/11 Poem from London—Michael Brett
Tomorrow, it will all run backwards.
The steel tsunamis will froth back upwards
And become solid.
The planes will be pulled out like javelins
And slide backwards, swallowing their vapour trails.
Tomorrow, everyone will be fine.
Tomorrow, everyone who died will come home.
They will sit again at the tables of home
And rejoin life's fellowship, its snapshots, tea
And picnics.
Tomorrow, all will be well.
Everyone will sleep as babies do under mobiles,
Untroubled by strange sounds, of aero engines
Flying too low and shadows over the streets.
Tomorrow, mobile phones will be just toys again.
The sky will be clear, blue, unbroken.
What I Said—Norman Stock
after the terror I
went home and cried and
said how could this happen and
how could such a thing be and
why why I mean how could
anything so horrible and how could
anyone do such a thing to us and what
will happen next and how can we live now
it’s impossible to understand it’s impossible
to do anything after this and what will any of us do now and how will we live
and how can we expected to go on after this
I said and I said this is too much to take no one can take a thing like this
after the terror yes and then I said let’s kill them
Slowing Down for Death—Hal Sirowitz
My father detested the drivers who slowed down
whenever there was an accident in the opposite lane,
so they could take a peek. They were making
his trip home longer. He said they were
like vultures, but instead of getting a meal
out of it they only saw, if they were lucky,
a few dead bodies. He didn’t think
death was so interesting. He knew
it was human nature to want to look,
to feel relieved that it wasn’t you
looking like a lifeless doll, but he felt
it was more respectful not to look—
to give the dead a little privacy.
He was sure if it was worth looking at
it’d be on the TV by the time we got home.
Photograph from September 11—Wisława Szymborska
They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.
The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.
Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.
There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.
They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.
I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.
In Their Flight—Mark Doty
Who believes in them?
It doesn’t matter much
to the souls, newly set free,
wheeling in the air over the site
of their last engagements.
Suppose we could see them?
They’d be like sparrows — not like,
they’d be birds, one of those autumn flocks
when the solitaries gather in great numbers,
over the waste places and the remaining fields,
turning in the air as if together they made a huge piece of cloth
folding in on itself, or a mathematical diagram of folding...
No hurry, nothing obscuring the air for them —
vast sky, entirely light-washed,
as they assemble into a great progression of pattern.
In community at last, we want to proceed in our flock, our troop...
____
Incorporated into a radiant vitality without ceasing…
You want more than that?
Of course you do: you want the steady
mosquito-drone to go on and on, ceaselessly,
you want to be the one who gets to do the perceiving
forever, of course you do.
____
But here’s my guess:
it’s another thing for the dead;
they’ve been singular long enough.
We can’t let ourselves see what
enormous work it is
to be one of something, to exert
the will to sustain those boundaries.
The dead, rimless,
loosed from particularity,
move out toward the edge of the city,
someplace the flock can unknot itself
freely, where they can feast in the fields
oblivious to the column of smoke roiling behind them.
_____
Anniversary day, evil wind banging the door to the gym
till the glass shattered, and Mauricio said,
— in a low voice, as if to say it would somehow protect him —
Lot of spirits blowing around today.
In the Burning Air—Jean Valentine
In the burning air
nothing.
But on the ground
Let the sadness be
a woman and her spoon,
a wooden spoon,
and her chest, the broken
bowl.
How to write a poem after September 11th—Nikki Moustaki
First: Don’t use the word souls. Don’t use the word fire.
You can use the word tragic if you end it with a k.
The rules have changed. The word building may precede
The word fall, but only in the context of the buildings falling
Before the fall, the season we didn’t have in Manhattan
Because the weather refused, the air refused…
Don’t say the air smelled like smoldering desks and drywall,
Ground gypsum, and something terribly organic,
Don’t make a metaphor about the smell, because it wasn’t
A smell at all, but the air washed with working souls,
Piling bricks, one by one, spreading mortar.
Don’t compare the planes to birds. Please.
Don’t call the windows eyes. We know they saw it coming.
We know they didn’t blink. Don’t say they were sentinels.
Say: we hated them then we loved them then they were gone.
Say: we miss them. Say: there’s a gape. Then, say something
About love. It’s always good in a poem to mention love.
Say: If a man walks down stairs, somewhere
Another man is walking up. Say: He sits at his desk
And the other stands. He answers the phone and the other
Ends a call with a kiss. So, on a rainy dusk in some other
City of Commerce and Art, a mayor cuts a ribbon
With giant silver scissors. Are you writing this down?
Make the executives parade through the concourse,
Up the elevators, to the top, where the restaurant,
Open now for the first time, sets out a dinner buffet.
Press hard. Remember you’re writing with ashes.
Say: the phone didn’t work. Say: the bakery was out of cake,
The dogs in the pound howled. Say: the world hadn’t
Asked your permission to change. But you were asleep.
If only you had written more poems. If only you had written
More poems about love, about peace, about how abstractions
Become important outside the poem, outside. Then, then,
You could have squinted into the sky on September 11th
And said: thank you, thank you, nothing was broken today.