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SHARDS
I am the glass that shattered:
a scream of slivers--
the opposite of object constancy.
I am the window that saw
the brute jet approach,
knew the Twin Towers
(vulnerable as Versailles
after the fall of the Bastille)
would collapse, becoming
an acrid heap of ashes.
I am the pane dozens of eyes
peered through during those seconds
before the world pivoted,
spun, somersaulted and
finally fell into multiple heaps--
wise, at last,
wise and gray.
IT
The fables wail of the forest
can not express it,
nor the image of Satan.
It is the dawn's early demise.
Like the odor of an untreated
dead-in-the-bedroom corpse,
its presence oozes and sticks.
It is an exact time: 8:48 a.m.
It is a particular day:
September the 11th.
It is the tonnage of
that time and the day.
It is what happens when
a man sits at his office desk,
sips coffee, and, in a second,
in a thick vomit of destruction
becomes a was instead of an is.
TWIN TOWERS
I remember
your cool sleek side,
the efficiency
of your invincible
verticality,
that thrust--
victorious--
into the sky.
The roar of
your death
as you crashed
exhibited
the bustle of
your life:
vital collages of
people, glass,
cable, light.
Heavy metal,
don't appear again
in my mind's eye,
alive yet
creating two
tombstones
too difficult
to erase--
the sketches of
steel ghosts.
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