Aftermath
Alas three weeks have passed and none alive.
The air is stained yet with the stench of death.
The subterranean fires still feast and thrive
To mingle with the living remnant's breath.
Twelve fathom deep, into a stinking hole
Men swim through filth, one beating heart to find,
And as the Icon of the shepherd's role,
Would not leave any of the flock behind.
For a short while, a gothic site was kept:
The vestige of man's power stood as an altar
Where rescuers into the fire had leapt
To spare their kin. Their courage did not falter.
Now flint-faced firemen their tears have shed
Upon the rubble shrine, and workers toil
To close the maw of Hell that glutton fed
On human flesh, and cleanse the sullied soil.
To heal the land, the humble pray and seek
The face of God, from wicked ways they turn.
Souls search themselves and their transgressions speak
But who from evil's mystery may learn?
The real tragedies, as Wilde said,
Hurt us by their absolute incoherence:
The poet, lamenting in the prophet's stead,
Cries want of meaning and crude violence.
We face the fathomless iniquity
Wordsworth foresaw in augury's remark:
Cloaked in the nature of infinity,
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark.
How did they dare? How did they dare to maim
God's image in mankind and so conspire?
How did they dare, in blaspheming the Name
Of God, tear down the multilingual spire?
Now are the men of action called to arms
To wrest the treacherous vipers from their nests.
To guard our safety from all fear of harms,
The happy few are quick in their arrests.
Brave angels from the elite soldiery
Peer in the dens from Kabul to Brunei
To paint the sons of Satan's empery,
The sultan saracens, with target dye.
The piercing lens of judgment so shall pass
Over the mayhem-makers on the run
As in the hands of boys, a burning glass
Roasts ants and insects in the focused sun.
We genteel citizens in Union Square
Discuss the crisis and propound our hunch
How terrorists are ousted from their lair,
While ashes tumble on our peace-time brunch.
And I, observing from a far-off screen,
The spoils of spectacle shall idly reap,
Look in the mirror and my beauty preen,
Retire to bed and hold my manhood cheap.
October 2001
