EDITORS NOTE: Submitted by a reader...
Like silent Pharaohs stood over Wall Street
Scraping the vast canvas of immortality
How many
died erecting those towers:
Welders of iron, exoskeletal
beams?
How many died as they came down?
Manhattan is
missing its two front teeth
Can you help me find
them?
World Trade Center burned and then
collapsed.
Dozens leapt from upper floors -- Beat, you
wings!
Just another few breaths! -- What were their
thoughts
On that long morning's fall? Millions of fingers
--
Fingers of Flesh, fingers of Memory -- endlessly sift
and sift again that ancient dust
Manhattan is missing
its two front teeth
Can you help me find them?
Now,
only a torn, disfigured pedestal remains
and on it these
words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of
Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and
despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of
that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and
level sands stretch far away.*
Autumn,
impervious,
Perhaps mocking our imperial pretense, whips
her hips,
Swirls her bluest skirt, and casts the bones of
September
Like I-Ching sticks against Horizon
Throwing
sunsets
To die for.
- Mitchel
Cohen
Red Balloon Poetry Conspiracy, and
Brooklyn Greens / Green Party USA
*Stanza recycled from Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1817.