World Trade Center

Architect Minoru Yamasaki: "The World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a living representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness.'   We are   still in twilight steles of trussed steel; twin towers to a slow dawn awakened by a yawn Cyclops not knowing when 20 minutes later we were from our pillar of truth made emissary arrow of Ormuz. Our storm-tossed galley drawn aft an inverted swallow, banking on the swift cables of a sky lobby’s quivering swells, blasted beyond the promise of a rainbow, beyond elevator shaft, our verse onto universe, expressed this September: “God of the noonday sky to be remember these twin chandelles made in offering to thee.” New York City 19 sixty-four World’s  Fair: Promise of Apollo, God of poetry and light. Rockets tower in imagination before a mammoth moving stair, and a gyre held high on its iron axis, inspires a prophet’s race for the moon with “It’s a small world’ for a tune. This small step  for man, giant  leap  for  mankind whose  twin  candlelight was   ignited,   rekindled by the innocent sacrifice of how many individuals on this altar of indivisible height, a ruin of yesterday‘s dream? Do eagles yet soar o’er antennas’ bright of  that  Empire  State? Do anthems yet ring from satellite to shining satellite? The morning wake-up call; some clerk on call waiting, floor 18 or eighty-four. “I’m okay.  I love you, no matter what,   we’re in God’s hands.” From these celestial solicitations like butterflies fluttering above columns of asbestos pollen we’ve been disconnected; and though the line has gone dead, the automatic reply is no; we’re not in the market this time. What company mans phones when within the thundering   den of hundreds of voices echoes along live wires?   Engines enchanted by Sirens' song of steel, strident resistance to all overturning forces. Poseidon’s trident cannot reel   in the bane of gales which have freed of gravity the main load like upward snow born by human warmth; while the Magazine Parade showers the confetti of the shock: 17,  Cosmopolitan, Harper's, Metropolis, Newsweek & Time now sold on the sidewalk.                           For us the only way is down;                       joints creak at each leg landing,                  adrenaline to the right, no railing,            beat after beat, pace after pace.       Blood floes, flood of the fire,  we cross by waters parted      . over the Half Moon over the Hudson, past the PONY to Brooklyn or Queens; back to the monumental exchange     . of 16 twenty-six, a burgher’s bargain,   trinkets traded to a lost race     .       whose hatchets hurtled at dawn            brought too late cries of alarm.                Rivers of regret will not derange                       the cycle of revenge once started                          the roll of its arbitrary rumble. A 15 yard fumble of hard-fought gain put an end to overtime, not yet spent by midnight across the dew-jeweled lawn we went, up the laddered launch pad,     to a tree fort clad in sequined light, wet heels slipping, flight after flight, laughing in the dark hours of dawn, by these same stars of stark starvation joined to those we’ve loved, but will never know again however visions strain or high we climb  a deck of observation. Over forty-five miles on a clear day; we saw smoke, five rose from the rubble. Five buds of geminate hands folded as one, Snapped     premature, praying     to God: Let me        bloom.  Make me       a living. are but a whisper to whimpering shepherds whose guardians stared at the stubble wary  for a chance revival from cataracts of fire, wardens of stone, still vaulted below,           last seen leaving, A trail of hoses through the verdant atrium, Atlas gone ballistic, with axes shouldering   this 14-story steel cathedral still smoldering feudal defiance. Are we at war                           without warning shaken  to the bedrock  of our continental shelf, while the world                          piles cairns and carpets our embassies’ with  roses and wreaths. No Manhattan island                     entire to itself, a minute of silence, one against fear, to breathe while the earth                      skipped the unlucky number that was less than his name: 13 hundred and fifty-three,                    Minoru Yamasaki; forty-eight feet of floor owed, just one tone more to those who hung               on the line, struck * zero, on hold for operators of enduring freedom   to fortify against strikes          of higher impact. Oh lunar grasp ever-exceeding that sways the wind and sea return the course of their existence. The man hammers   the meaning of his administration: generation’s favor, optimistic, like son to mother, patient in the clamor; who paid the difference by a 12 minute window, where united hearts of steel in shells so brittle, beat a trail of fumes, determination’s turtle. Steep is terror’s terrain, a tempo frenzied minds blank, muscles freeze, eyes waver gone the memory; gone its moonlit wake like strings struggling to find their way home to level that plane even though human frailty is at stake. By the uneven plain      of once twin towers the full assembly       press the final claim. Apollo, Artemis             a brother, a sister family by family       a mother, a neighbor, face to the camera,       pleading and sober, flash a lost icon.               Time runs out as they stammer a       fully familiar name, children estranged,         find unbelievable that in these fields lie     accounts irretrievable freed of the balance, made forfeit, exchanged, on that date to remember: 11th of September. Their eight by 10’s with candles frame hope     of rescue in voids      below. They    roam revolving clinic      doors unsettled   dust clinging to what   must be a          conversation         begun with      time never late to      answer the        inevitable         questionnaire: Name__  Sex__  Birth Date__  SS# __  filed         as an  estimate       missing dental records, shoes, last clothes worn.  They slipped out in the early dawn. The day wanes.         Infidels wander. Her son was calm.      She is Hispanic. To outer suburbia came a call of panic.          Cameras pan. Lenses refocus                 to embrace the shifting locus.             A body found. Open the roster:         Section Two, TR, 9-11,  Foster. added one space.  It was called    the side pocket from behind the 8 ball. Hands clasped like lockets in free fall, cameos of the silver screen dropped by soundless windows countless were seen. Fallen angels freed from the mold      of sand-sealed steel, fire-treated, built to withstand but not the fuel   of 7 fifty 7’s gone astray.  Of dismay the stars’ thin light wept crimes so cruel, innocence by hatred heated,    gone global / glaciers of old.    Treadmills trapped, time-zone     synchronized, recurring nightmare by suspect channels unknown; while stations accessing software, shutters suspended,         tunnel for clues, and stutter the 6 o’clock news. On assignment,  from L.A.,  the oriental charmer:   … sum settled up front, twenty-5 thousand $’s, loss confirmed,  to next of kin, since Little Rock, in cases warranted, doubled or tripled stock… a voice of scandal cut short by a flustered peter cloistered behind a counter of fact files, special reports, dispatches, patched piles, now showing, on location, building 4 live. A crew of runners yell: brother, what gives? Reporters go to gape at what news can escape; the truth indivisible after all, sifted and hauled from this densely  3  dimensional ground zero, gone under God,  where we saw 2 towers go, that in liberty and injustice, first American, then United, now stand as 1.Thanks for reading I don't blame you if you quit. This is another unfocused sort of poem. I researched newspaper headlines and added unassociated memories from the week after the towers fell.  Any suggestions on how to put more distance in? Written January 20th, 2002 © on Jan 20 2002 01:55 AM PST   0 • 12