9-11 Poems at Five
by Robert Bové (Sept. 2006)
(Note: I composed this poem cycle in early Fall 2001. Poems here were soon published at National Review Online, Opinion Journal, Chiff and Piffle, A Small Victory, The Texas Mercury, and Poets for the War. The entire cycle was published at Enter Stage Right, and linked at Little Green Footballs and Ed Driscoll among other sites, and is available at George Mason University’s 9/11 Digital Archives, soon to be housed at the Library of Congress. I am at work on a related cycle, Deep in the Hard Part, which can be found at New English Review, in order, here, here and here.—RB)
Compass
We marked four winds by an acrid smoke,
Smoke first black, then white,
Driven across East River and New York Harbor,
Carried east across Brooklyn Heights, then south over Staten Island,
Out over the Narrows, down Jersey Shore, then up Long Island and out to sea,
Carried north over Central Park, over Harlem, Washington Heights,
Over and into the Bronx, over and into Connecticut beyond,
Carried west over Hudson, raking up and down Jersey Palisades,
Fort Lee to Bayonne.
Over all was blown this marvel, a dark compass in the sky.
We saw it from a hill in Green-Wood, by Tiffany’s tomb,
Acorns, catkins, catalpa fruit littering the manicured grass,
Along with charred memos, letters, and newsprint
All covered, all covered with thankless ash—
In this ash, ashes, the ordinary become SOS, the truth of what was
And what is.
Upon the ashes of that work
Is our work—
Begun when theirs ended—
In smoke and ash,
Twisted steel, exploded glass,
When our towers, one after the other,
Shuddered and collapsed,
Exhausted.
Engine 205
Those who know that work is love
Know that this work is great love,
Work done in the face of death
In defiance, in respect,
True work, true love, sacrifice—
Lives for love, living for love.
Ladder 118
How will DNA tell us
Whose hand grasped
Axe to free trapped
Clerks in elevator
Shafts—
Or which hand
Steered fatal jet—
Or whose feet bore
The weight of
Boots, belt, air tank
And helmet
Up and down flights of
Stairs and
Into the lighted
Pyre.
Will the DNA tell us
Who loved to dance,
Though he danced
Badly—or which
Plotted to
Undo dancer in mid-
Dance—
Or who, could he
Speak once more,
Would surely ask,
May I have
The next dance?
Restless and Unsleeping
I thought it raged somewhere else—
Twister hop scotching Kansas,
Flood drowning Minnesota—
Always, always somewhere else.
But it was racing across
Cloudless skies, down calm East Coast,
As arsonist, as human
Bomb, as some demented god.
And from a cell phone inside
We got our answer to Where
When he said, The fire is here.