Two Towers

Nine years have passed since the event pictured above changed our lives and the perceptions we had about our own safety. On September 11, 2001, I was a teacher and was watching these events unfold on a television screen in the faculty room. A young teacher standing next to me turned to me and asked, “Do you remember the last time this country was attacked?” I looked at him, and rather dryly replied, “No. I wasn’t alive during the War of 1812.” While it was a sarcastic response, it was a true one. Pearl Harbor was a part of a territory, not a part of the country, when it was attacked. Besides, I wasn’t alive then either, but my parents told me what it was like.

Nine years ago, the President spoke for all of us when he vocalized that this attack was launched by extremists, and not all of the religious followers of Islam, Nine years have passed, and instead of the wound, that was sliced open that day, healing, it seems to be bleeding still, but not in the shock and the anger of nine years ago, but in hatred of born of prejudice and religious intolerance.

The poem I am posting today was written within a month of the event. It speaks of the unity we felt on that day, not the division we are experiencing today. I posted this poem in the hope that maybe we can remember the caring and self-sacrificing of that time, and finally bury the anger and the hatred of today.

Mohammad S. Chowdhury, a waiter at Windows on the World restaurant on the top floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower, was killed in the attack of September 11, 2001.

Salman Hamdani, a New York City Police cadet and emergency medical technician, was killed that day trying to help the injured.

This wasn’t an attack on Christianity, or Judaism, but on America. And Americans of all faiths were its victims. Let us try to remember that.


TWO TOWERS
Christopher Bogart

Here once stood two towers,
Twin white monoliths,
Slender threads against a bright September sky.
One stood for Commerce -
The other, for its Might.
Proud and Defiant they stood -
Born of a country, a city,
Proud of its liberty
Defiant in its status -
The most powerful democracy
This world has ever seen.
They stood tall,
Proud,
Defiant,
And unprepared.

Two planes appeared here,
That bright September day.
As if from nowhere,
They appeared.
Aimed sure -
Shot silver –
From a dark malicious bow.
They blackened that bright September sky;
And,
In the twinkling of an eye,
They shattered our lives.

For one brief moment,
Our hearts stood still,
And a city,
A country,
A world
Held its breath
In stunned silence.

The trumpet had sounded.
All looked to two towers ablaze,
Black smoke pouring from their gaping wounds,
Flames spreading their dark smoky wings,
Born of an anger that choked and bore
In its ugly talons,
The death of thousands of innocents.

They reached to the heavens
In their pain and disbelief –
They cried out to the heavens
For help,
For relief.

Two towers shattered here,
With one rumbling roar
And then another
They fell here,
Collapsing into a cloud
Of smoke, rubble and white dust.

But on that very bright September day,
Two new towers rose from that white dust,
Emerging strong and powerful from that debris -
Rising high,
Crowned with two strong sure hands
That reached up to hold back the sky -
The hands of firefighters,
Of policemen,
Of construction engineers,
And of volunteer citizens from every walk of life -
Citizens of a great city and beyond -
Gripping girders,
Combing concrete –
Searching for the living,
Consoling the grieving
As they mourned the dead.

Two towers rose that day from the debris and white dust,
Made not of steel girder and white concrete
But of our Faith and our Love.
Hands reached into the rubble to pull forth hope,
And raise the dead incorruptible.

For we were changed that bright September day –
We did not die in the flames of our defiance and our pride.
We rose from that crucible,
Phoenix-like,
With our Faith and with our Love
To face a new day,
A new life in
A new world.