Sunday, September 11, 2011

THE NORTH TOWER - EPILOGUE

In Commemoration— September 11, 2001 - 2011
By Stephen Cipot

Give me passion. Give me truth, and the dreams of youth.
Stone me. Starve me. Burn me, kill me, fling me down.
Tragedy, courage, and love, are rooted out of my soul.
Out of the day, out of the blue,
Disintegration of values, views, and hopes —
Whirled into a vortex, leaving a gaping hole.
Ashes for truth, and bones for freedom,
Nothing anyone would want to believe in.
A tangled madness below the ape on the way to oblivion.

One died a fireman,
One an airline passenger,
One a civil servant,
One a policewoman,
One an electrician,
One a janitor,
One a stock broker,
One a secretary;

So many names upon the wall, all have a voice.
When words cannot capture and flesh is too weak to speak,
Ply me with the creed of churches, temples,
Mosques and schools,
So that what I build will rise almost to heaven.

Every soul is a world of becoming,
And what destiny is, deeply connected to one another.
Freeing itself to eternity.
We touched the star where you vanished
With our outstretched beams of light in the night sky.
Unifying in harmony, the peace of Buddha,
Prayers of Jesus, dreams of Mohammed, thought of Plato,
Passion and civility of Dr. King,
Memory of the shtetl, poetry of Whitman,
Brought together in the crucible of a small urban space,
In these ashes are the fiercest unquenchable flames.