
Someone…something… has fallen to earth,
Tumbling from far above to the dismal ground.
Each year, as this moment comes `round, we are met
With its foul-smelling, screeching descent.
We’ve not made peace with this unknown,
We’ve not processed the quivering snapshot,
We’ve only erected monuments of its anger…
Again, as I see myself in its decline,
I am greeted by my own intolerable failings
Determined to shackle the thrashing legs
And bind the wrist to stale, bleached bone.
O! We are resolute each time it falls to us,
To the solid earth; her clattering,
To this determination; our held posture…
Into the costly void we go again,
Deeper than the last, pungent in our horror,
Overlooking embers of exactness that boil
Deep below this; our replicating defeat!
To annually pen an immobile descent
In godforsaken reverie of vengeance
Is more damning than this occasion…
O! We’re clothed in potency by tailored failings;
This unremitting plunge shall course our evermore
Save we excavate our mettle from `neath dread and death.
(Let us not be trapped under the ruins of our own collapse.)
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
Thank you, Robert for the beautiful introductory words to the poem and for writing such an important book as Americans Who Tell The Truth.
Special mention to the amazing site, No Cure For That, where I had the pleasure of being introduced to Robert.
Here are other poetryman 9-11 poems:
1. One Life One Bone One Skull One Moment
2. Remember This Moment
3. Floor by Floor Beam by Beam Soul by Soul
4. In Pursuit of 9-11
5. Widowed
6. Omnipresent Enemy
7. We Shall Never Forget (August 6, 2001)