Nine Eleven Bells

The year turns nine eleven, and
A vast blue sky hangs
Over Manhattan, glittering as a bell jar on an anthill.
Within the plated scurrying bodies
Beats one enormous
Termite heart: it pumps a beat,
Relentless, sounding like a tocsin in the blood
Around the world, yet like all hearts
We hear it not –
Until a ragged tearing in our breath
And heated hammering in our ears
Gives gulping pause.

Nine now, and the twin towers
Reach their eleven into the icarine blue
As if to say “we’ll climb so high toward the mid-day sun,
Then buy it all, all that we see!”
But wings of death explode the dream
And shards of concrete shed their lethal rain
And the endless spill of paper casts itself upon the wind.

Within a hot glazed room the phone bell rings,
Puncturing the unnatural moment’s
Hush at an empty desk.
Outside, the nine eleven calls ring out and split our world:
There was before, now
There is after.
There are some sights no human eye was meant to see
Yet horror draws us back,
Again and again,
Until our very dreams seem to contain
A silver guillotine slicing through such towering hopes.

The voices of the world spill out
In babbling shocks of sharing sorrow,
Chased along the canyons by roiling blasts of
Smoke and angry dust: from far, we
Taste the spoil upon our tongues
And weep for what is lost.
On Sunday there are bells:
Some are beaten for the rhythmic call of common purpose.
Some are stroked for the sweet
Beauty of shared humanity shown in the flames.
Some are pealed for lonely anguish.
Some are cannoned for the fierce pleasure of the brassy voice.
In days that follow, leaders beat repeatedly
With their iron spears upon the loud liberty bell:
Blood calls to blood in the age-old sacrifice of our kind.
Yesterday, a fireman rang the bell
That starts the dance of capital once more.
In far-off lands, the bells ring to announce
Another flood of refugees.

In these repeating numbers and
Strikes of clapper on singing brass
We chase our memories,
Seeking the patterns that will give us ease.
Perhaps it will not come, until
Our hearts are still enough to let within
A small and yet intense unbounded love:
A tiny bell of golden brightness that rings for one and all.