In the immediate aftermath of September 11th, poems began popping up around New York City, some propped up in windows or taped to lamp posts. It seemed that in the turmoil of all that tragedy, poetry helped people cope with emotions that they otherwise struggled to grasp.
Some of our best-known poets shared their emotional and spiritual struggles publicly, as Deborah Garrison did in her poem "I Saw You Walking," published in the New Yorker just a month after the event:
I saw you walking through Newark Penn Station
in your shoes of white ash. At the corner
of my nervous glance your dazed passage
first forced me away, tracing the crescent
berth you'd give a drunk, a lurcher, nuzzling
all comers with ill will and his stench, but
not this one, not today: one shirt arm's sheared
clean from the shoulder, the whole bare limb
wet with muscle and shining dimly pink,
the other full-sheathed in cotton, Brooks Bros.
type, the cuff yet buttoned at the wrist, a
parody of careful dress, preparedness --
so you had not rolled up your sleeves yet this
morning when your suit jacket (here are
the pants, dark gray, with subtle stripe, as worn
by men like you on ordinary days)
and briefcase (you've none, reverse commuter
come from the pit with nothing to carry
but your life) were torn from you, as your life
was not. Your face itself seemed to be walking,
leading your body north, though the age
of the face, blank and ashen, passing forth
and away from me, was unclear, the sandy
crown of hair powdered white like your feet, but
underneath not yet gray -- forty-seven?
forty-eight? the age of someone's father--
and I trembled for your luck, for your broad,
dusted back, half shirted, walking away;
I should have dropped to my knees to thank God
you were alive, o my God, in whom I don't believe.
W.S. Merwin, similarly, published a poem in October of 2001 entitled "To the Words:"
When it happens you are not there
oh you beyond numbers
beyond recollection
passed on from breath to breath
given again
from day to day from age
to age
charged with knowledge
knowing nothing
indifferent elders
indispensable and sleepless
keepers of our names
before ever we came
to be called by them
you that were
formed to begin with
you that were cried out
you that were spoken
to begin with
to say what could not be said
ancient precious
and helpless ones
say it
As time has passed, poets have tried to use the transformational power of poetry to memorialize 9/11. In a 2006 podcast, Poetry Foundation producer Curtis Fox described poetry's ability "to memorialize the victims, to transform the terrible images from that day into something more dignified, more elegiac." Galway Kinnell aimed to do this in his poem "When the Towers Fell," (published in the New Yorker in September of '02). First by recalling the terrible images:
Some with torn clothing, some bloodied,
some limping at top speed like children
in a three-legged race, some half dragged,
some intact in neat suits and dresses,
they straggle out of step up the avenues,
each dusted to a ghostly whiteness,
their eyes rubbed red as the eyes of a Zahoris,
who can see the dead under the ground.
And then by trying to transform them:
As each tower goes down, it concentrates
into itself, transforms itself
infinitely slowly into a black hole
infinitesimally small: mass
without space, where each light,
each life, put out, lies down within us.
The great Polish poet Wisława Szymborska attempted something similar in her poem "Photograph from September 11":
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.
(translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)
"Photograph" was intended to be included as part of the Holzer installation at the 9/11 memorial site, but was judged to be too distressing. That's not to say that the poem's intentions aren't noble, but those close to the tragedy may need more time before these sorts of dignified or elegiac transformations -- even when attempted by our finest poets -- are possible.
Feel free to share your thoughts and any poems you associate with 9/11 in the comments section below.
Michael Moore: If the 'Mosque' Isn't Built, This Is No Longer America
Amb. Marc Ginsberg: 9/11/10 -- Unfinished Business Take #9
We would have sent the healing energy of forgiveness and compassion to the world rather than our soldiers with killing tools seeking revenge and blood.
"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
"Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
"You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one
"Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
"Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
"You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one"
-John Lennon
there r days
when u being u
brings tears to my eyes
makes my chest swell with pride
my face beam with joy
and every nerve in my body tingle with exhilaration
there r days
when u being u
brings tears to my eyes
a stabbing pain to my heart
a sadness i can't explain
a longing i can't deny
a sickness in my gut that feels it will erupt
there r days when i am simultaneously
proud and dejected
lonely...
honored...
and
awed
there r days like this
when with a tear-stained face
i sit
i write
i cry
i pray
i smile
i wait
patiently
gratefully
expectantly
for the day
when u being u
returns u to be with me
even if only for awhile...
u being u
requires me
to be
strong
and
here 4 u
As two planes struck the towers,
Our nation’s hearts stood still.
“They” had hoped to make us weak.
“They” thought they’d break our will.
When they crashed into our pentagon,
“They” felt they’d dealt a mighty blow,
That would break the spirit of our country.
But so little did “they” know!!!
That on a plane flying over Shanksville,
Brave passengers had fought back!!
And let them know without a doubt,
WE WONT STAND FOR THIS ATTACK!!
That day a nation came together,
Turning neighbors into friends.
And the ones who’d hoped to break us,
Found that our strength NEVER ends!
So let us Pray and Honor them,
Those 3000 souls sent up to heaven.
On a day that we will NEVER forget.
Now simply known as 9 / 11.
Melanie Woodard
8 Sept 09
Over the decades, I was sure I knew the poet's name who wrote the following simple one:
"Irises.
They Used to Grow Here."
I was thrilled after all those decades when I found, online, the person I thought wrote it.
He replied back that he liked it but was not the author.
Internet searches have turned up nothing.
So maybe I just dreamed it.
In any case, for me, that is what that day meant to me, even if Irises were nowhere around.
Humans were.
And then they were not.
“day of the movie"
by
bohdan yuri
towers on fire
crimpling steel,
sucked into the vortex of death.
souls falling,
dying one by one,
and in bunches on each floor.
left behind,
the hollow walls of what once was,
suspended in eternity,
trembling from what was below,
crumbled bodies,
and parts of whatever innocence
still pretended to believe.
the remains,
that night the sky was filled
with the residue of ghosts,
spreading with the current
into the farthest reaches
of any civilization that cared.
September 11, 2001,
was not like any other day,
on that date, America
was in a real horror movie.
then you are like cowardly mice
fed government cheese
so you would appease
when actually it was thrice
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/questions/leap.html
I
Profoundly moving and disturbing and wake-up-calling.
and it hit me hard as hell
That building wasn't hit you see
by any thing from air
They called it building 7
but luck just wasn't there
it too fell just like the others
but much more quietly
47 floors in all did fall as fast as air
but this was much too easy
a collapse that made me stare
in my mind i kept repeat
that building seven fall
it was as if someones command
had made its corners give
and give they did all at once
again collapse into itself
Then it hit me hard and fast
this was no mere collapse
this was an act of treason
and i was witness
but where do i report?
Because you see that last building
was a government fort
They're Gone (But Not Forgotten)
Working as brothers though they weren't that by blood,
The bonding of this family helped them make it thru the mud.
The morals they learned taught them to be kind yet brave,
If they could do for others why couldn't their lives be saved?
They're gone.
They're gone, but not forgotten
They live inside their loved ones who are still alive.
They're gone, but not forgotten
As long as we're alive their dreams will never die, though
They're gone.
As the days have slipped away I've come to understand,
It's not what we have in life that makes a boy a man.
It’s what we do for others makes us part of the chosen few,
They gave up their lives, there's nothing else they could do
They're gone.
They're gone, but not forgotten
They live inside their loved ones who are still alive.
They're gone, but not forgotten
As long as we're alive their dreams will never die, though
They're gone.
Our gratitude can never be plentiful enough to pay homage to those heroes.
Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us;
because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us;
because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing...
We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened,
and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes.
We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know,
but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way
in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.
And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad:
because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us
is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time
when it happens to us as if from outside.
The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses,
the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us,
and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate."
— Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet"
Those great strong towers of ice and steel,
And melted by what terror and what miracle?
What fires and lights tore down,
With the white anger of their sudden accusation,
Those towers of silver and of steel?"
From Figures For An Apocalypse, VI - In the Ruins of New York, written by Thomas Merton - in 1947
I should have dropped to my knees to thank God
you were alive, o my God, in whom I don't believe.
If I were a poet, I might have written something like that.
A great magnet hidden in the rock?
Something stronger than the magic metal
leads you past torn hinges, sprung lock.
You're invincible.
It's irresistible.
Like gravity, that lures a broken petal down.
Like gravity, that lures a broken petal down.
--my late friend and teacher, William Vincent Sieller, (1917-2001) written in 1973
Who was stung in the neck by a wasp.
When asked: "Does it hurt?"
He replied: "No it doesn't."
"But thank God it wasn't a hornet!"