World Trade Center Poetry

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World Trade Center Poetry

  • There was no languor, no drowsy trade winds,
    or stoned-out stupor of lapping waves,

    only news, the big board of crime,
    corporate raiding, selling short and long.

    It didn’t matter, I was no Ishmael.
    I just hovered there in the thick of the material –

    at the edge of a skyline of money,
    rising in a glass box.

    It was comic to think Bachelard believed elevators
    had destroyed the heroism of stair-climbing.

    In the rush of soaring metallic, past the whiff of 4-martini lunches,
    up gearless traction in transparency,

    waves of cool air coming from the vents.
    At the 85th in a sky lobby we stalled out and the sun

    flooded the glass/the river/the cliffs.
    Jersey was just gouache and platinum coming apart –
    a glistening smudge
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    and some nagging line from Roethke I’d been reading –
    circulating the air:
    “It will come again. Be still. Wait.”

  • I am an old woman in a black dress

    Kneeling in the ruins, clutching my shoulders,

    teeth clenched and lips drawn back in a snarl,

    rocking back and forth in grief and rage.

    I need to tear out my enemy’s throat

    for the taste of his lifeblood

    is better than strawberries.

    I am kneeling in the ruins of Byzantium.

    I am kneeling in the ruins of New York.

    I am saying the names of my dead children

    over and over, as if they were silver bullets

    to shoot at God’s smile,

    but I want to kill my enemy’s children

    more than I want my own children back.

    My face is twisted and strong.

    People in uniforms want me to stand up

    and get out of their way.

    I ignore them.

    The sky’s a pillar of smoke above me.

    There’s a pillar of fire raging inside me.

    I clench my shaking old hands into fists.

    I need to squeeze my enemy’s throat

    more than I need to hold my lover in the sweet and warm.

    His body’s in front of me, squashed to a bloody pulp

    with fallen metal.

    Somebody takes our picture.

    I am kneeling in the ruins of Jerusalem.

    I am kneeling in the ruins of Ireland.

    I am kneeling in the ruins of New York.

    I am kneeling in the ruins of Stonehenge

    that was a city once.

    This was a world once

    and I was human once but I’ve forgotten it.

    I walk on bloody feet thru war.

    Dying soldiers kneel to me

    and I smile.

  • this was our world trade center,
    which made people surrender
    to the beauty of this engineering wonder,
    but,at times with a lurking danger
    that someday, someone might shatter
    this great twin tower center.

    came Tuesday of 2001, 11th September,
    a day full of horror & terror,
    ’cause, there was this perpetrator
    who gave the fateful order
    for the most dreaded disaster….
    people ran helter -skelter,
    stricken with anger, panic & fear,
    holding onto their lives dear
    praying & hoping for loved ones – near & dear

    i am just an onlooker,
    a helpless by-stander,
    filled with a grim wonder..
    is this a life in perfect order?
    is this world in perfect order?

    all said & done, i continue my prayer
    for all souls – victim and survivor,
    each, someone’s father, mother or brother,
    or looking to find their peer,
    i also pray for the ever growing number
    of firefighters, workers & volunteers
    to join hands & work together
    to emerge out more stronger , richer
    and strive to make the world safer & better.

  • A plane crashed in to the world trade center.
    18 minutes later, building two
    Got hit by another, what do we do?
    It is no longer an accident, which we thought at first,
    This attack on our country is by far the worst.
    Thousands of people fear at this time,
    What has been done? A hostile crime.
    We do not understand what is in store,
    What will come next, war?
    As President Bush said, “make no mistake about it”,
    We will resolve this, we shall stand united.”
    We pray for the lives of others,
    Our Friends, Relatives, even Fathers or Mothers.
    And as the world waits for what is to come,
    We will go on stronger by what has been done.

    September 11, 2001
    Many people killed with no knife nor gun
    Men without the will to keep on living
    Killed thousands, and thought they were giving
    It was early morning in NYC
    When the men flew planes into The Twin Towers you see
    First the North, then South
    People running open mouthed
    Many died heros, didn’t even think twice
    trying to save people they were quite nice
    America has been attacked, we are now united,
    The Spirit of America will Endure!
    RIP ALL VICTIMS!

    “Terrorist attacks on America”
    A different world from ours it seems
    People have different hopes and dreams
    Please don’t lets those dreams be bad
    Please don’t be so violent and mad
    Please don’t turn your anger to hate
    Hate is what brought disaster the date
    Of September 11th 2001
    Some angry people thought to have some fun
    They’d crash some planes and put people in fear
    That the end of their freedom was very near
    Many died and many injured left behind
    Many families of every kind
    So many children and so many wives
    Had daddys and husbands that lost their lives
    Many people’s lives were lost
    It may be it’s our freedom’s cost
    But please don’t let this happen again
    For with hate it all began
    Hate destoys..or so they say
    Everyone was aware of it that fateful day
    So before your anger turns to hate
    Think about what happened the date
    Of September 11 2001
    When some hate filled people thought they’d have some fun

  • W hen tragedy struck on 9/11/01
    O ur world changed forever but we will
    R emember all the
    L oved ones who died on that
    D evastating day when

    T wo thousand, nine hundred eighty-five souls fell in the
    R ubble of destruction.
    A bout 50,000 people worked at the World Trade Center; its
    D ust and smoke and panic and loss
    E ffected the lives of people all over the planet. Their

    C ourage in the face of such an act
    E clipsed the hatred that flew into the
    N orth tower which was 1,368 feet high.
    T hen the south tower at 1,362 feet fell and no one could
    E xplain such a horror that could
    R e-shape the lives of an entire world in one event.

  • You made choices
    On that day.
    Tell me.
    They were hard.
    Kerosene reeking,
    Hell’s hot fire,
    Thick black smoke
    To breathe.
    Broken windows
    Like some broken toothed grin.
    Macabre humor
    At the few choices left.
    Did you hope for a savior?
    They would ascend after you.
    The ground is far
    And the sky so blue,
    Sun filled. Hope filled.
    The promise prayed for.
    The promise paid for.
    Left foot first?
    Or right?
    Reach out a hand.
    Steady yourself on the sill.
    Knees bent,
    Jump as far out as you can.
    The wind rushes past your ears,
    Roaring.
    I hope you closed your eyes.
    Every doomed floor
    Witness to your final fall.
    All of life is choices.
    That yours should be reduced,
    To just those two.

  • Alabanza. Praise the cook with the shaven head
    and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
    a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
    the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
    Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
    glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
    Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
    worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
    that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
    for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
    Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
    even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
    rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.

    Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
    like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
    Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
    could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
    Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
    Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
    Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
    where the gas burned blue on every stove
    and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
    hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
    or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
    Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
    of his dishes and silverware in the tub.
    Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
    who worked that morning because another dishwasher
    could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
    to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
    floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
    Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
    and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

    After the thunder wilder than thunder,
    after the booming ice storm of glass from the great windows,
    after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
    after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
    for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in
    Fajardo,
    like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
    about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
    soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
    across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
    Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

    Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan to Kabul
    two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
    mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
    Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
    And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
    I will teach you. Music is all we have.

  • 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

  • “Now I’ve seen everything,” an anonymous New Yorker remarks, marveling at the spectacle unfolding more than a hundred stories above street level. It’s the morning of Aug. 7, 1974, and Philippe Petit is walking across a steel cable strung between the towers of the World Trade Center. Amid the gasps and murmurs, that line stands out, and invites a bit of pondering. It’s an expression of wonder, for sure, but it also carries an implication of jadedness, especially for moviegoers. All the surround-sound bells and whistles and digitally enhanced fireworks in the world can’t quite shake us out of the feeling that we’ve seen it all before. But we haven’t. There is always something new under the sun. To stop believing that — to mean it when we say we’ve seen everything — would be to give up on art and surrender to cynicism. “The Walk,” Robert Zemeckis’s painstaking and dazzling cinematic re-creation of Mr. Petit’s feat, stands in passionate opposition to that kind of thinking. There will always be fresh, unimagined wonders in store. And fresh horrors, too, as the sight of the twin towers can’t help reminding us.

  • 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 aftern
    oon 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 in
    to 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.