9/11 Poem from London

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.

-Michael Brett (1936- ), British poet, published on 12/31/2009.

Links to poems about 9/11, curated by the Library of Congress, can be found here: https://guides.loc.gov/poetry-of-september-11/selected-poems

Jesus Poem

If I'd been trapped in one of those towers,

and I had a cell phone,
I'd have called my sister and brother
and told them I'd loved my life,
loved them, always would, and to
thank everyone for being so good to me and
to take no avenging actions,
nor support the avenging actions of others,
but to let me die with the dignity of my faith.
Then I'd step out into the air,
something opening beneath me,
the last fall of my life.
It's hard to say what I'd be feeling,
surprise, mystification, terror, glory,
but I'm sure I wouldn't be angry.
In the last moments
there's nothing to fix,
no protest against the speed of the fall.
I imagine I 'd be filled with
something beyond terror,
a feeling which is
(from where we stand)
intolerably bright.

-- Susan Birkeland (1961-2006), San Franciscan poet, found at https://www.sfheart.com/birkeland/nine_eleven.html

Curse

May breath for a dead moment cease as jerking your

head upward you hear as if in slow motion floor

collapse evenly upon floor as one hundred and ten

floors descend upon you.

May what you have made descend upon you.

May the listening ears of your victims their eyes their

breath

enter you, and eat like acid

the bubble of rectitude that allowed you breath.

May their breath now, in eternity, be your breath.

Now, as you wished, you cannot for us

not be. May this be your single profit.

Of your rectitude at last disenthralled, you

seek the dead. Each time you enter them

they spit you out. The dead find you are not food.

Out of the great secret of morals, the imagination to enter

the skin of another, what I have made is a curse.

--Frank Bidart (1936- ), American poet and professor at Wellesley. Robert Pinsky discusses this poem here at the L. A. Times in 2002: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-sep-08-oe-newpinsky8-story.html

A list of poems curated by the Library of Congress about 9/11 can be found here: https://guides.loc.gov/poetry-of-september-11/selected-poems

Image: The Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, PA.

The Convergence of the Twain

I
Here is an architecture of air.
Where dust has cleared,
nothing stands but free sky, unlimited and sheer.

II
Smoke's dark bruise
has paled, soothed
by wind, dabbed at and eased by rain, exposing the wound.

III
Over the spoil of junk,
rescuers prod and pick,
shout into tangled holes. What answers back is aftershock.

IV
All land lines are down.
Reports of mobile phones
are false. One half-excoriated Apple Mac still quotes the Dow Jones.

V
Shop windows are papered
with faces of the disappeared.
As if they might walk from the ruins - chosen, spared.

VI
With hindsight now we track
the vapour-trail of each flight-path
arcing through blue morning, like a curved thought.

VII
And in retrospect plot
the weird prospect
of a passenger plane beading an office-block.

VIII
But long before that dawn,
with those towers drawing
in worth and name to their full height, an opposite was forming,

IX
a force
still years and miles off,
yet moving headlong forwards, locked on a collision course.

X
Then time and space
contracted, so whatever distance
held those worlds apart thinned to an instant.

XI
During which, cameras framed
moments of grace
before the furious contact wherein earth and heaven fused.

--Simon Armitage (1963- ), British poet, professor, lecturer, playwright, musician, disc jockey, and former probation officer, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom as of 2019. This poem was written in 2005. 

Later, There Was An Island (A Poem Cycle)

1. Aftermath

There is an uncommon light in the sky
Pale petals are scored into stone.

I want to write of the linden tree
That stoops at the edge of the river

But its leaves are filled with insects
With wings the color of dry blood.

At the far side of the river Hudson
By the southern tip of our island

A mountain soars, a torrent of sentences
Syllables of flame stitch the rubble

An eye, a lip, a cut hand blooms
Sweet and bitter smoke stains the sky.

2. Invisible City

Sweet and bitter smoke stains the air
The verb stains has a thread torn out

I step out to the linden grove
Bruised trees are the color of sand.

Something uncoils and blows at my feet
Sliver of mist? Bolt of beatitude?

A scrap of what was once called sky?
I murmur words that come to me

Tall towers, twin towers I used to see.
A bloody seam of sense drops free.

By Liberty Street, on a knot of rubble
In altered light, I see a bird cry.

3. Pitfire

In altered light I hear a bird cry.
By the pit, tor of metal, strut of death.

Bird song yet. Liturgie de cristal.
Flesh in fiery pieces, mute sediments of love.

Shall a soul visit her mutilated parts?
How much shall a body be home?

Under these burnt balconies of air,
Autumnal duty that greets us.

At night, a clarinet solo I put on:
Bird song pitched to a gorge, a net of cries.

In the news, a voice caught on a lost line:
`We've even struck the bird's throat.

Color of Home

I met you by Battery Park where the bridge once was.
Invisible it ran between the towers.
What made you follow me, O ghost in black cutaways?

Dear Mr Lorca I address you,
filled with a formal feeling.
You were tongue tied on the subway till a voice cried out:

34th street, last stop on the D.
It's the Empire State, our tallest again.
Time to gather personal belongings, figure out redemption.

You leant into my ribs muttering:
Did you hear that, you seller of salt
and gatherer of ash just as your foremothers were.

How the world goes on and on.
Have you ever seen a bullfight?
What do you have strapped to your back?

Then quieter, under your breath:
Let's survive the last stop together.
I knew a Hindu ballerina once.

Nothing like you, a quick, delicate thing.
I walked with her by the river
those months when English fled from me

and the young men of Manhattan
broke cherry twigs and scribbled on my skin
till one cried out -- I am the boy killed by dark water,


surely you know me?
Then bolt upright you whispered:
Why stay on this island?

See how its ringed by water and flame?
You who have never seen Granada --
tell me, what is the color of home?

Kabir Sings
in a City of Burning Towers

What a shame
they scared you so
you plucked your sari off,
crushed it into a ball

then spread it
on the toilet floor.
Sparks from the towers
fled through the weave of silk.

With your black hair
and sun dark skin
you're just a child of earth.
Kabir the weaver sings:

O men and dogs
in times of grief
our rolling earth
grows small.

--Meena Alexander (1951-2018), Indian-American English professor at CUNY, essayist and poet, found at https://guides.loc.gov/poetry-of-september-11/selected-poems

The poems are read here in this video, read on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: 

On Giving

Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving. 

     And he answered: 

     You give but little when you give of your possessions. 

     It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. 

     For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear 

you may need them tomorrow?      

     And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog 

burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the 

holy city? 

     And what is fear of need by need itself? 

     Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is 

unquenchable? 

     There are those who give little of the much which they have—and 

they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts 

unwholesome. 

     And there are those who have little and give it all. 

     These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer 

is never empty. 

     There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. 

     And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their 

baptism. 

     And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do 

they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; 

     They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into 

space. 

     Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind 

their eyes. He smiles upon the earth. 

 It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through 

understanding; 

     And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy 

greater than giving. 

     And is there aught you would withhold? 

     All you have shall some day be given; 

     Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not 

your inheritors’. 

      You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” 

      The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. 

      They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. 

      Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy 

of all else from you. 

     And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to 

fill his cup from your little stream. 

     And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the 

courage and the confidence, nay the charity, or receiving? 

     And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their 

pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? 

     See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of 

giving. 

     For in truth it is life that gives unto life—while you, who deem 

yourself a giver, are but a witness. 

     And you receivers—and you are all receivers—assume no weight of 

gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. 

     Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; 

     For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who 

has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father.

--Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-American author, poet, and artist, from The Prophet, 1923

On Giving and Taking

Once there lived a man who had a valley-full of needles. And one day the mother of Jesus came to him and said: “Friend, my son’s garment is torn and I must needs mend it before he goeth to the temple. Wouldst thou not give me a needle?”

And he gave her not a needle, but he gave her a learned discourse on Giving and Taking to carry to her son before he should go to the temple.

--Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-American author, poet, and painter

Invitation to Communion based on Matthew 11:28-29

Jesus said,‘Come to me, all who are weary
and whose load is heavy;
I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble-hearted;
and you will find rest for your souls.’
(Matthew 11:28-29)

-- from Common Order 1994, Church of Scotland (Presbyterian)

A Drop of Water: Opening Acclamation

A drop of water.
Insignificant in isolation.
When dropped in a pool
The ripples move out into infinity
The water is changed
By one drop of water.

A drop is falling
Now
Into the pool of our spirit.
The water begins to ripple...

Holy God,
as we consider the magnitude of a drop of water
to touch and change the pool,
may we hear the power of your touch in our lives,
the potential for our lives to touch others. Amen.

--Katherine HawkerSelf, member of the UCC, posted on Liturgies Outside. http://liturgyoutside.net/CPr5.html

This is Why People Burning Down Fast Food Joints and Whatnot

Q. How do others sin against you?

A. By cursing me—telling lies about me—or striking me.
Q. What must you do to those who thus sin against you?
A. I must forgive them. *

See, I learned my catechism well.
Learned to offer my cloak and coat, my cheek
again and again as the skin was splayed
from my body. I can quote
Martin Luther King Jr. with ease,
praise the Americana of his martyrdom,
the sweet, unselfish beauty of that bullet’s velocity.
Shall I sing “We Shall Overcome” while
I swing? I have wanted so long
to believe in justice, to think of each blow
as recompense for my wickedness.
How can I continue?
How can I continue?
How can I continue
to take and eat this image
of myself, choke on the eloquence
of my dissent, speak love fluently
to someone with his knee
on my neck, his bullet in my child?


*A Catechism, to Be Taught Orally to Those Who Cannot Read; Designed Especially for the Instruction of the Slaves in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States.↩︎


--Jacqueline Allen Trimble, Alabaman African American poet, scholar, professor of English and chair of the Department of Languages at Alabama State University, from Poetry magazine, July/August 2021.