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September |
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Like unforgotten words flowing from a pen, Like withering leaves adrift from an autumnal vine, Suspended from the skies, People fall from a fiery inferno, Locked in death's embrace. Silent screams punctuate the page We turn, and cannot turn away For they are our family For they are us. Riveted by replay, Images coalesce Seared in black and white and blood. Slowly, irrevocably, Horror acquires a name. George who kissed his wife and Peter who forgot. Mary who could have stayed home But didn't. Petra who was Trampled in the stairs And Nadya who saved another. You are our brothers, our sisters Our kith and kin, our heroes, our victims Your sighs of hope or despair Whisper still in the night air As dusk daily anoints The earth with ashen tone. Like a thousand notes falling pell mell From a golden-bowled sax, Like the thundering stillness Of a photo of Niagara Falls, Your cries linger long into the season. And, with each rain The earth is sown once again with salt. Like the sharps and flats Of an unscored symphony, Like the reverberation of a tear Hitting the Times Square pavement, Liberty, mourns, swathed in a mantle of sadness. Baton in immobile arm upstretched She wrenches from the skies a hymn. For those who live and cannot forget, For Amy whose husband kissed her, And May whose husband did not. For the children of the valiant, For the friends of the fearful, For each of us. That we may translate Anger into gestures of peace And violence into songs of love. That pain may become beauty, While from the scarred memory of our people There may blossom new courage To live, to let our hearts beat as one, And, yes, above all, to remember. |
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