Gazing into the Abyss

It is said that poetry aids in healing by providing emotional expression, cognitive framing, and neurophysiological responses that promote well-being during times of stress, trauma, or grief. Through metaphor and imagery, poetry offers a unique way to process painful experiences, foster empathy, and reconnect with one’s authentic self. Reading or writing poetry can reduce anxiety, synchronize heart rhythms, and provide comfort and perspective, allowing individuals to feel more grounded and less overwhelmed. Here are some things that have helped me deal with the unimaginable:

List of “Don’t Forgets” and “Remembers”

We were eight.

Before September 11th, we would wake up with a list of “Don’t Forgets”
Don’t forget to wash your face
Don’t forget to brush your teeth
Don’t forget to do your homework
Don’t forget to wear your jacket
Don’t forget to clean your room
Don’t forget to take a bath

After September 11th, we wake up with a list of “Remembers”
Remember to greet the sun each morning
Remember to enjoy every meal
Remember to thank your parents for their hard work
Remember to honor those who keep you safe
Remember to value each person you meet
Remember to respect other’s beliefs

Now we are nine.

When New York Had Her Heart Broke

Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100
By Martín Espada

for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local l00, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center

Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.

Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread.

Alabanza. Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.

Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.

Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub. Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.

Harbour

Photograph from September 11
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated By Clare Cavanagh

They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

An Open Letter to NYC

History of the Airplane
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth when their wonderful
flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk into the kingdom of birds
but the parliament of birds was freaked out by this man-made bird
and fled to heaven

And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and
flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather
helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not
even though he circled Versailles

And then the famous Flying Clipper took off in the opposite
direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves
were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky

And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns
and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism
but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima

And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and
these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any
real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings
and like Icarus crash to earth

And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying
bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third
Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of
peace

And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st
century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and
stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating
heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no
parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part
of the scorched earth of the world

And a wind of ashes blows across the land
And for one long moment in eternity
There is chaos and despair

And buried loves and voices
Cries and whispers
Fill the air
Everywhere

If This Is Goodbye

September Twelfth, 2001
by X.J. Kennedy

Two caught on film who hurtle
from the eighty-second floor,
choosing between a fireball
and to jump holding hands,

aren’t us. I wake beside you,
stretch, scratch, taste the air,
the incredible joy of coffee
and the morning light.

Alive, we open eyelids
on our pitiful share of time,
we bubbles rising and bursting
in a boiling pot.

My Blue Manhattan

STRANGERS
by Lucille Lang Day

I didn’t know the man in black pants
who plunged headfirst
from the top of the north tower

or the young mother trapped
behind a locked door
on the eighty-seventh floor.

I never met the couple
crushed in their final embrace
and stuffed into one body bag,

or the fire chief quickly buried
under tons of concrete,
steel, glass, and ash.

Nor did I ever say hello
to the blond woman
who called her husband to ask

what she should tell the pilot
standing beside her
at the back of the plane.

I never shared coffee
with the six-foot-four executive
who said, “If we’re going

to crash into something,
let’s not let it happen.
Our best chance is to fight.”

Yet I have felt sun on their skin
and tasted wine on their lips.
I have run using the long muscles

of their legs and felt air
rush into their lungs, their hearts
pumping in my chest,

and they have combed my hair
each morning, tasted
cereal from my bowl,

and held my children in their arms.
At night they have watched
stars shimmer through my eyes.

Now they have returned
to earth and air, but I still feel them
stirring inside me, walking

the long corridors of my brain,
searching for something
irretrievable, precious, still there.

On That Day

Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unguarded, it will slip away. Hold every moment sacred. Give each one clarity and meaning, each one its true and due fulfillment. – Thomas Mann

And so it goes