Intimate Stranger

NEW YORK, 12 SEPTEMBER 2001

“Then it went dark. Real dark. Like snow.”

words of a survivor

will the hand endure moving over this paper

will any poem have enough weight

to leave a flight-line above the desolate landscape

ever enough face to lift against death’s dark silence

who will tell today

the huge anthill of people remains quiet

somber and shrill, bright and obscure

as if the brown effluvium of sputtering towers

sweeps still the skyline with a filthy flag

who will weep today

today images wail for voice behind the eyes

planes as bombs stuffed with shrapnel of soft bodies

then the fire inferno flame-flowers from skyscrapers

human flares like falling angels from the highest floor

down, down all along shimmering buildings of glass and steel

fluted in abandoned beauty and fluttering

weightless and willowy and flame-winged to streamline

fleeting reflections in the fugitive language of forgetting

the hell-hound of destruction has a red tongue of laughter

who will tell and who will count

gouged eyes do not understand the blue of sky

through a dismal and chilly nuclear winter

people stumble people shuffle

stumble-people shuffle-people worm-white-people

where lie the faces

old before their end or their wedding

grayed in ashes from head to toe

as if clothed in coats of the snowing knowing of ages

beneath rummage and debris rosy corpses move and mumble

and in East River confidential files and folders float

with shreds and feathers lacerated human meat

scorched confetti for the dog’s feast

who will tell tomorrow tomorrow

where are the faces

will the tongue still think

still pulse its dark lair

with flamed memory of bliss

will words still drink oblivion

will any poem some day ever carry sufficient weight

to leave the script of scraps recalling fall and forgetting

will death remain quivering in the paper