Responses To The Events of 9/11

Jack Foley

This week's column is the poetry I read on two special radio shows in response to the horrors of September 11, 2001. For the most part, the selections came to me by e-mail. I felt-- and, as it turned out, listeners felt--that the language of poetry could respond not only to the terrible events of that day but to the terrible language in which those events were conveyed to us.

For a writer, one of the worst things about what is happening is the awful rhetoric that is pouring out of Washington--not just esthetically awful but morally awful. The orchestration of feeling by the media has been particularly appalling. First the media told us "what" we were feeling--YOU ARE FEELING GRIEF--and then it told us how to "handle" what we were feeling, and what to do about it.

I think the sense of fear is the very worst thing: it's the sense of fear that makes people do terrible things, things they wouldn't ordinarily do: put perfectly peaceful, patriotic Japanese-Americans in internment camps, for instance. The current sense of fear has also been orchestrated by the media as part of their "take" on what is happening. You know: "Don't be afraid of anthrax--but look over here, here's another case!"

It was interesting that one of Osama bin Laden's spokespersons announced that "they" have hundreds of young people who are anxious to die--just as anxious to die as Americans are anxious to live. It's been a long time since Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death." I think it's true that many Americans are perfectly happy to have bombs dropped on other countries--people used to say, "Nuke 'em!"--but they are not perfectly happy to have young Americans die in a war. We are indeed committed to "life" in that sense. We are a militaristic country in our thinking in all sorts of respects, but we are not a country of idealists or, even more importantly, soldiers. Bin Laden's people--disgusting as they are--understand that. Americans like their comforts--their VCRs, their "home entertainment centers"--and they have little sense left of a cause someone would be willing to die for.

The attack on the World Trade Center was horrifying for a number of reasons, but one of them was the stark fact of people willing to kill themselves (AND a number of others) for a cause: we understand that kind of behavior--killing a bunch of people and then killing yourself--as the result of personal anger: your girlfriend jilted you, you didn't like the way you were treated at work, so you shoot up a bunch of people and then turn the gun on yourself. But dying for a cause you believe in (however tragically misguided bin Laden's people may be)--that seems odd.

WORK READ BY JACK FOLEY 9/12/01

[The hot-air balloon] appears, as you observe, to be a discovery of great importance, and what may possibly give a new turn to human affairs. Convincing sovereigns of the folly of wars may perhaps be an effect of it; since it will be impracticable for the most potent of them to guard his dominions.

                                --Benjamin Franklin, letter to Jan Ingenhousz, 1784

When my brother and I built and flew the first man-carrying flying machine, we thought that we were introducing into the world an invention which would make further wars practically impossible.

                                --Orville Wright, 1917

E-mail from journalist Charles H. Featherstone, who works at the World Trade Center in Manhattan

9/11/01

Asalaam Alaikum all--    I just wanted to let you know that I am safe. I was in 3 World Financial Center, which is immediately west of both World Trade Towers, when both  planes hit, and in fact, I watched the second plane--a United Air Lines 737,  it looked like--slam right into the south building. I got one of the first ferries out of the complex before both towers collapsed, and watched the  north tower fall. I can't even begin to describe the horror of what I've seen--people jumping from the top of the towers to escape the flames and the smoke, airplanes exploding, the streets full of injured. We evacuated the BridgeNews offices on the 27th and 28th floors right after the second plane hit.    

I'm safe in Jersey City right now, very shaken. It looks like a good portion of the eastern face of Three World Financial center was damaged when the north tower collapsed. Jennifer is safe too. She was supposed to come meet me in the World Trade Center concourse, and thank Allah subhana wata'ala that she didn't come early.    

I fear, also, for what we're going to do to the people we determine are responsible. May Allah subhana wa ta'ala forgive us and guide us. And may he have mercy on our souls.    

CHF    

*

Poem by George Wallace

falling    

september eleventh the day the world went down on itself the day peace like wind  
like dust and muscle like hope and tears like splintered air like two great towers in  
love with the sky collapsed in the street the day fifty thousand carved glass birds  
fell out of a jeweler's bank of clouds that plate glass leafy falling down day september  
eleventh so many souls a thick black fog a quarter inch thick darkness settled over  
the city the day the sea waved back at america with its useless hands saying
get up
get back  
up

*

“Rambling thoughts of sadness”: e-mail from poet Mary-Marcia Casoly

Since rising, the madness that is with us has made me sad. Bad enough to see its coverage on Internet newspaper or in the paper, I can't watch  it on TV. To stare at the aftermath of revenge. How to handle it. But  it can't be fought as a war; war doesn't even work; it feeds on that. To  imagine there are people who dream of this kind of attention, even if after their death, or that their hatred is so strong just for an outcome of pain no matter whose. Nameless victims, innocent, for a bid for  immortality, a black horrible immortality. I can't take this in. Sometimes hatred has gripped me, I've cursed with an unspoken voice no matter how sweet I may look--but I'd never harm. Act out that harm.    

Oh it’s too sad the shock of grief, how well I know it in its small ordinary form; losing the life of someone we know, or even someone we  don't know but that touched our lives in an intimate way--that part of  us that makes our living be, our real living if for those we love, close to us far away, that is the real survival. But somehow after that hurt something of them does stay with us, does strengthen and remain with our  lives--much more moving than the disaster itself.    

Dark premonitions play across thoughts sometimes, but are pushed away for all the quotidian life that takes our attention. Such horrific things as the New York disaster to varying degrees happen all over the world to such innocent lives as those that jumped out of that building or were trapped—no more part of the hatred that wants to destroy. And so I pray not only for the dead, and the grieving, but also for the anger  that needs a better channel, to be released in another way, certainly  another outcome, I know not how but one the world could celebrate rather than grieve. Out of even this destruction I pray that something beautiful, unexpected by those that imposed it on us, grows,  materializes, heartens and perpetuates us. It is not the end of the world, even as we know it, but listen to us stop, listen to our hearts beat and how we respond. I close my eyes and I see enough reflecting on  this unimagined moment; I don't need to turn on the television to see,  to be rushed forward into action of the aftermath, or wallow in the horror of it. I want to hold back, be silent for a while, and pray those that react do so with intelligent providence.

I don't know what else to think about, these are only wild thoughts as I try to sort through the wreckage, I think of the humor and love that I've seen in the aftermath of hurricanes, terrible earthquakes, other natural disasters. In some way this must all be the expressions of this, though this is an unnatural disaster, not just the seemingly useless pain of it, but like a nightmare what it portends, what it speaks to us to fix, to mend, to remember, to honor about life and the world.

I've got to go if I want to get back by 2, just rambling on my thoughts, hope you don't mind that I share them with you. It is hard to sort out and think beyond the pain and horror; I do not want it (this horror) to amplify fear and anger; but to seek something other, I pray, but I don't know what or how.  

*

From Online NewsHour:

ROBERT PINSKY: Here are two poems from the Middle East, one by an Arab and one by an Israeli. The poems are not different in feeling from what other sources give us. But they fulfill poetry’s ability to crystallize feeling in a way more memorable, more nuanced, more haunting, than other kinds of language.

First, a poem by the Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish, as translated from the Arabic by Tania Nasir:

I AM FROM THERE

I come from there and remember, I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother and a house with many windows,  
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the ken of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there. I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.  
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:  
Home

And here is a passage from “Jerusalem, 1967,” a poem by the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, as translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell:

Always beside ruined houses and iron girders  
twisted like the arms of the slain, you find
someone who is sweeping the paved path
or tending the little garden, sensitive
paths, square flower-beds.
Large desires for a horrible death are well-cared-for
as in the monastery of the White Brothers next to the Lions’ Gate.

*

From Ameen Rihani Home Page:

Ameen Rihani (1876-1940) is the founding father of Arab-American literature. His early English writings mark the beginning of a body of literature that is Arab in its concern, culture and characteristics, English in language, and American in spirit and platform...[He] is also considered to be the founder of “Adab Al-Mahjar” (Immigrant Literature). He is the first Arab who wrote and published complete literary works in the U.S. (New York). His writings pioneered the movement of modern Arabic literature that played a leading role in the Arab Renaissance.

According to several scholars, his major novel, The Book of Khalid, is the foundation of a new trend within Lebanese-American literature in particular, and within Arab-American literature at large. It is a trend towards wisdom and prophecy that seeks to reconcile matter and soul, reason and faith, and the East and the West in an attempt to explicate the unity of religions and represent the unity of the universe.

Rihani, who was influenced by the American poet Walt Whitman,...introduced free verse to Arab poetry. His new style of poetry was published as early as 1905. This new concept flourished in the Arab world and continued to lead modern Arab poetry after Rihani’s death in 1940 and throughout the second half of the 20^th century.

From The Rihani Essays:

My wish is to live without disliking anyone,  
To love without being jealous of anyone,  
To rise without being elevated over anyone, and  
To advance without stepping on anyone or becoming envious of those above me.

From The Path of Vision:

We are, in a word, drifting away from the path of vision. We no longer find joy, as did the ancients, in pure thought. Pragmatism and utilitarianism are our gods...

We often choose the line of least resistance. We must be practical and have our creature comforts. Moreover, we expect, we insist upon our reward within a certain time in the material things of the world...We are a practical people--very busy--in a hurry. We have no time for ethics.

Experience is knowledge, but knowledge, when it is sought only as a material resource, is not always a blessing. Experience is wisdom, but wisdom with those who lack vision is not always power...A thought in the crucible of life melts into the thought of the world; the footsteps of a pioneer become ultimately the highway of a nation...Every human action, collective or otherwise, has in it the possibility of a creative or destructive force.

*

Lines from Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,  
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,  
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,  
With every leaf a miracle--and from this bush in the dooryard,  
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,  
A sprig with its flower I break.

WORK READ BY JACK FOLEY 9/19/01

"WHEN MY BROTHER AND I BUILT AND FLEW THE FIRST MAN-CARRYING FLYING MACHINE, WE THOUGHT THAT WE WERE INTRODUCING INTO THE WORLD AN INVENTION WHICH WOULD MAKE FURTHER WARS PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE," REMARKED ORVILLE WRIGHT IN 1917

 

how to name this horror
what language
can do anything but fail before it?  
an official at my son’s school  
suddenly discovered that a  
woman colleague  
was on one of “those planes”  
(with her two children, one five, one three years old)--  
began simultaneously  
to weep
and to curse.
Terror: “intense, sharp, overmastering fear”
and Anger
not that it was done “here”
but that it was done
at all
Hideous official language
issuing out of the government and
the television
(there is no difference between
the government and the television)
hideous actions
numbing us
What is the relationship
between the “public poet”
and the “private poet”?
Does such a “relationship” exist?
Is it possible to say anything
and mean it
at the same time--
I mean
something real (like death)
Can we respond
to the reality of their death
with any reality at all?
They were, and
they are not--
and their martyrdom
was as horrible as any horrors of war
Everyone knows this
“I have a friend,” a friend writes,
“I phoned...left messages....”                                                     

And the leaders who comfort us	“President Bush asked a receptive Congress to grant him
seem nearly as fiendish	unprecedented powers to wage a war against an unidentified
as the fiends	enemy, seeking authority to annihilate not only those
who planned this horror	responsible for Tuesday’s attacks, but those who...”

This is a day  
of mourning
mourning for
deaths
but mourning
for our own
burned innocence,
our own burned selves--up in flames!--
for all the selves we murder when we cry “VENGEANCE VENGEANCE VENGEANCE” mourning for the sweetness
we pretend
each day / may
harbor:
this is a flower
for New York City
for all those
who died
and, dying,
live.

 

 

*

 

I was writing this about U.S. terrorism and U.S. client terrorism against peoples, nations, and environment--and finished it after the NYC attack. Terrorism has no beginning or end--or any sides.

BLACK DAHLIA

    drinking song  

THE CUPS WE DRINK FROM ARE THE SKULLS OF ARABS  
AND THIS SILK IS THE SKIN OF BABIES.
THE FROTHING ON OUR CHINS
IS NOT RABIES
NOR ARE OUR FINGERNAILS
GOLDEN SCARABS.
WE’RE NORMAL HUMAN ANIMALS
AND WE ITCH LIKE SCABIES
FOR THE RAPE OF THINGS.
It is ordinary and beautiful
to have the duty
to twist and tease
the lovely glimmering light
we see in things.  

Then one day we look about
and hope to put it back
inside,
where once was fresh foam or moss.

But we’ve made a cross  
of wings of birds and butterflies
and it cannot lift off the ground
or push into the soil.
— Where there was a perfume smell
of mulch
now there’s the stink of oil
turned inside out,
and finger prints of brightness
gone away.  

What
will
we
say
to
all
the
singing
realms
that
try
to
rise
inside
of
us
?  

(grahhr)

 

--Michael McClure

*

 

i am not lost i am in san 
francisco    

a man with a knife in a desert sits with his face to the campfire,  
and his back to the night. his car is on the side of the road,  
bad water pump. i am not lost, he says, i am in san francisco.  
that was three days ago, he is obviously delirious!  
night drapes an arm over his shoulder. stars crackle all around him.  
he looks into the flames, sees dancing girls. the fire return his gaze.  
he hears a rattlesnake. i will cut the damn teeth  
out of that rattlesnake's face, he declares.  
that night, while he sleeps, a boulder rolls off the mountaintop,  
and bounds cliff-wise across the road into the fire.  
when he awakes, he will find ashes everywhere.

--George Wallace

 

*

 

“THEY NEED TO MAKE NEW WORDS FOR THIS”  
                  --A young NYC man, responding to a reporter    

 The shovels and the buckets know  
 The language of this hot, dark snow,  
 The density of ash, the scrape  
 And drift of powder’s breathless shape.    
 
 Dig down, dig down, till words are found  
 That have an unfamiliar sound;  
 But who on earth will understand  
 The speech of hearts turned into sand?  

--Leslie Monsour

 

*

September      

“Card fifteen is Le Diable, The Devil. According to the hermetic orders  it indicates the sovereignty and beauty of material splendor, bondage to  the passions and obsession. It is followed by The Tower, anciently called The Blasted Tower or The House of God. In most decks it is depicted  as a tower struck from above by fire or lightening, people are falling from the crumbling walls.”    

“When I heard the first plane I looked up and noticed it was flying too low, then it disappeared behind the buildings. When I saw it again it crashed into the tower and exploded. I just stood there in shock, we couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do. Police and fire trucks  came flying past us. Then I saw the second plane turn and disappear into the other tower. For a second there was no sound, it was unreal, like we were watching a silent movie. Then came the explosion.”    

“We saw the ash cloud coming toward us. It was full of human cries.”    

“And hell followed with them.”    

“There will be false prophets that will say, ‘He is here. This is the way. Here is the Lord.’ Do not heed them, they are deceivers. They are the mouths of destruction.”    

“I was at home asleep and my sister woke me. She was shaking me hard, speechless, pointing out the window. The window was black. I thought it was still night, but when I looked at the clock I realized it was morning and something was terribly wrong.”    

Around the table, in a dim light, they were discussing how this thing might be accomplished. “With razor knives,” said the man in the doorway, “and fear. Fear is the only language that God speaks that everyone understands. We will write a message on their souls and they will know that God has spoken.”    
“Today, for the first time in history, a part of the empire city lies in ruin.”    

“I dreamed the future Manhattan, ancient as Virgil’s Rome. I stood at the end of a stone path that stretched out into the bay and saw a new city emerge from the fog. Its bricks were blackened, all  the skyscrapers gone, but something about her was more beautiful than I have ever seen her before.”    

“I am alone in the dark. I hear your cries, but when I call out you don’t respond. I try to wake up, but when I do I discover that I am still in a dream, as if I’m shedding an eternal cocoon.”    This is an old house. I’ve never been here before. All the lights are out except a room in back that I take to be the kitchen. From the light I can make out a stairway against the far wall of the dark room I’m in. Something horrible is happening in the kitchen. A man, tall, shaved head, shirtless, is attacking other people in the room. He seems to have a large knife. I rush into the room to stop him. It startles him. He runs backward, crashing into a mirror. He falls to the floor as glass falls  all around him. The room is covered with blood and tissue, there are people dead or gasping for breath everywhere I look. I grab a large shard of the mirror and rush the man. Before I reach him he gets to his feet and strikes out at me. He cuts my mouth open and lacerates my tongue. I shove  the shard into his body, just beneath his rib cage. He grabs my hands and helps me drive it in, then falls away. I run out of the kitchen and up the stairway, feeling my tongue in pieces, blood boiling out of my mouth. The killer is at the bottom of the stairway now. He looks up at me with  stark terror in his eyes. He’s sliced open at the chest, stomach and lower abdomen and from each of the wounds a large flaccid penis is hanging. He’s trying to say something, trying to use my tongue, but I can no longer speak.”    

“Sunday afternoon I’m at work. I walk into the utility room to get a mop and notice, hanging from the cabinet above the sink, a snake. I’m startled and jump back against the door. He speaks to me and says, ‘I have seen you. I know what fuels your dreams. I will scatter your kind across the desert and they will vanish without knowing their destroyer. I am going to set your world on fire.’ I run out of the room and out of the house and stand there trembling, alone in the late summer rain.”     

Jake Berry 9.19.01

*      

Zero Ground

steak s out a pattern opposed  
dis registers numb files
outer limits surpassed  
by map’s impossible origins  
as red encounters blank
in superficial fright wig
amassing symbols of despair
in a small rectangular “thing”  
easy enough to swallow but
utterly indisposable
we each that is wander according
to the permutations of discord and
ire swings its heavy shift into
the gods are totally blind
as on no other day this petty
no more a conflagration than
an end to all conflagrations
enter by this small lower gate
into hell and discard opprobrium’
s lie white flecked and “evil”
attach to the scrotum the hundred pound
unit and fling the “corpse” into
its ashen ultimatum a figure
eight resolves its own horror
in a reminiscent of the circular
conditions of the psychiatric ward
and nail down the coffin’s wing
can no longer fly to the sun
no longer bail out water like
used to on the moon with a crimson
berlitz “book” and code name
something like “morpheus” ? -dice
cast into the glottal well
speech is only plausible
after death takes “over”
the remaining quadrants to be filled
in by a pus like substance
“ichor” ? left indra at the wheel
collapsed over surrogate orgasm
on automatic pilot and swerve
into hydromechanical sky
with immense a question
as to the shape it will resolve
rope burn and magma of human
detritus the epochs of history
numbered backwards from alph to
zed in the upper left dit dot
a burgeoning suicide note
the size of tartary in hazy
ink hemistich with double margins
to the right to allow for free fall
plunging with massive elephants
into the proverbial thimble of water
applause leftover from canned heat
and Mom wired to her tarot deck
attempts that hapax smile
everyone undresses so quickly
none there who nor others that
have any skin left to tell
“to wake without confusion
and with compassion
\for “all” living things\

 

*

ON REPORTS OF THREATS  
AGAINST ARAB-AMERICANS

“She confided, ‘I hate being Middle Eastern today.’”

I

news kiosk owner from  
Palestine, rabbi's son out of
Brooklyn, Puerto Rican
poet new to the city who never
had time to write
an old poem, son
of an Irish cop now
working at an investment
desk, cosmic dreamer, bodies, body
parts, American eyes, flags, body
bags, Afghanistan, what can we do
under morning skies burrowed
into words that will not
breath deep enough, and who
will suspend both time
and our liberties just long enough
 
II
 
Lewis and Clark move backwards
They hope to discover Washington D.C..
the Cherokee nation comes home
to the diamond-headed Exchange
John Brown rises from dust
at the foot of the Pentagon
Abraham Lincoln crosses the prairies
on a moonflooded night
Walt Whitman is confused by fire
tumbling out of American eyes
Chief Seattle dreams of Indians
dressed like clowns in a Wild West Act
Miles Davis is Dark Magus in daylight
performing for the bankers
 
III
 
I am an Arab
my feet are burning
I am an Arab
my hands are feeling
for stones that can speak
I am an Arab
with a memory
of woven sky
I am an Arab
with a Jew in my body
I am an Arab
in fear for my country
I'm Ibn Arabi
I'm the Palestinian poet
Adonis who will weep
in blue air
I'm the casbah
on clouds
and my head
turns inside out
 
I am a single child
raising an arm
upward toward God
or silence
 
I have subway dreams
and islands  in my head
 
my hopes
are here in America
rooted to the streets
and the bison headed
emptiness at the heart
of what we face tomorrow
 
Neeli Cherkovski
13 Sept 2001

*

SEPTEMBER

What is there left at the garage sale of Western Culture?  
What artifacts? What heart-shaped curios?
What treasured, misplaced, valueless mementoes?
What rags of yesteryear they used to wear?
Where are the wisdom-books someone would read
And gain courage from, and think them wise?
Where are the women with their suns and eyes?
What is there here that has not gone to seed?
Where are the chickens coming home to roost?
Where are the architects whose work is gone?
Where is Hamlet with his father’s ghost?
Where are the diapasons? Where the sun?
Nothing but carnage and a speechless sky.
Nothing in this rubble left to buy.

            --Jack Foley

 

Jack Foley