9/11

Phoenix emerges

From the Fall of innocence

Innocents fallen.

9/11 casualties:

3,000 innocents die trapped in twin towers

6,026 American troops dead in pursuit of...

Scores more brain damaged/amputees

150,000 innocents die trapped in Iraq/Afghanistan

Those poor, dear souls who went innocently to

work on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 were

presented with a horror beyond imagination and

had to choose whether to jump or face a more

gruesome death. Their deaths have been greatly

dishonored by our country's "shock and awe"

response which has killed other innocents many

times over and has tarnished our image and

reputation in our world community. The 9/11

dead deserved better; a commitment to a more

peaceful existence would have been a fitting and

lasting memorial. We could have reassessed our

practices of resource exploitation and corporate

adventurism, all in the name of democracy

building, and stayed out of the pipelines of other

sovereign nations.

A memorial at Ground Zero is appropriate as a

tribute to our twin tower casualties but a far

greater memorial would be a lasting embrace of

truth and decency.

Here is a poem I read out of the New Yorker, just

a few weeks following the tragedy. I thought it

beautifully rendered:

I Saw You Walking

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.

—Deborah Garrison

From the issue of Ocotber 22, 2001.