All Summer long
They seemed bound to fall
And I wondered why they did not:
Constantly kill people or better yet:
Had not been declared illegal
Cautious walks down quiet streets
Close to the center as I could dare
Made me feel safe—almost safe
From Air Conditioners poised to fall
Wherever I could be discreet
Trying not to look insane
I tried to find Manhattan streets to
Manage my tightrope down their middle–
Streets empty enough to negotiate
Or new enough to wear few of them–
Dangling so precariously
Monstrous necklaces upon the buildings
Like ponderous bodies about to fall
Never before and never thereafter
Was I so certain, so sure in my prescience;
Old Stuyvesant High School
Crowned my best street: an absence of cars,
A surplus of windows, cold exposed bosoms
Whose falls I escaped—with impunity
By cleaving the center of streets
And then:
That last weekend‘s warning
Addressed to my son:
Don‘t walk beneath it, the
Footbridge on Liberty
It‘s been closed for ages
You can‘t walk across it
Traffic still goes under it
But pieces have fallen
May fall any moment
I always avoid it
And cut through South Tower
A word of warning
A gift to my son
And to his betrothed
On their way to a wedding
Warning to wedding guests
Albatross in the sky
Next day was Sunday Brunch
Nine/ Nine/ Two Thousand One:
Old memories wrapped anew
Wedding guests returned enthused;
We shared our recent holiday
Recounting the Palatine ruins
With lost and buried Romans
Doorways and Romans covered by time
How long will our civilization endure
And what may bring its downfall?
I asked aloud to no one at all
Not even expecting an answer
A final sip of coffee
Broke my husband‘s silence
Broke it with a cliche:
When it ends it will end
BECAUSE:
We Were Not Watching Our Backs:
The silence of a Finished Cup
Words unexpected, words that chilled
Did the chill belong to retrospect or
To prescience in the air!
I remember, too, the night of the tenth
The Eve of Nine/ Eleven
Dinner and wine with a friend; then:
Ascending from the subway
I chose the longer way home
I walked across the Plaza
Lifting my face towards the sky
Lifting my face towards the towers
It was cool and I shivered
Regretting my wandering choice
Wishing I‘d stayed underground
My face not facing the towers
I shivered again and thought:
The Fall will soon be here.
I was only thinking of Autumn
Now intermission, a pause for sleep:
Next day, the South Tower fell
Six Hundred Feet from my home
Running down the esplanade:
My Fire-bag, Laptop and All
My dog to his neck in the ashes
With blankets of paper like snow
Strange how such shreddings survive
Watched from the Hudson
North Tower‘s slow crumble
Was rescued by a water taxi:
Yellow boat that looks like a toy
Alive in my Yellow Submarine
I observed my watch had stopped ticking
After the North Tower‘s Fall.
Afterthought:
I wish I could say I made this all up
The Autumn/Fall a Freudian slip/But it is true to the preternatural
You have a gift someone once said
And I don‘t know what that meant except
I stopped being afraid of falling air conditioners
You hardly see them anymore.
This poem is a revised version of an earlier poem in this collection called: "Days Before 9/11: Falling Objects."