A 9/11 Poem

Soon came the structure for remembrance,

Videos and journals, brick and steel work:

The half-naked Cell-Phone Jumper,

The Waving Woman in the afterlife-window,

Descending from different heights, sing-u-lar-ly,

Almost alone.

The Falling Man became a book; brave distillation.

There were other men and women. They held hands,
Leaping and clenching,
Their slow limbs (makeshift bungee-ropes, orange-black, failing)
Almost still.

Most of the dying was less spectacular,
Invisibly done,
Almost condemned to silence
By siren, heat, debris, pavement screaming.
All of this,
But a solidarity of the last telephoned words of that world,
For those who could still part lips:

I love you.

(Where were you when...?)
I was leaving school.

During English, my brother caught the second hit,
As it happened, that swell of extinction.

My no-bullshit grandmother,

A different evacuee, overlapping centuries,

Had telephoned my mother to say:

'You should turn on the television,
I think history is taking place.'