Poetry

11 September, 2001: The Towers

Will Elsin

Contents - Sep 2009 - Buy a copy now Editorial: 2009 Fighting Fund launched - Peter Westmore USA: Anglicans fragmenting over homosexuality - Babette Francis News: The Church Around the World Christian Life: Courage and EnCourage: a chaste lifestyle for the same-sex attracted - Marie Mason Liturgical Books: The case for a new Missal translation - Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli Campus Life: Brisbane hosts 2009 Australian Catholic Student Association Conference - Br Barry Coldrey Priesthood: Reflections of a newly ordained Sydney priest - Fr James Mccarthy FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH: Sola Fide (by Faith Alone): is this sufficient for salvation? - Frank Mobbs The Reformation and England's changing Coronation Oath - Tom Johnstone Letters: Galileo - David Walker Letters: Ambiguities in Vatican II? - George Simpson Letters: Women priests - Name and Address Supplied Letters: Abortion evil - Diana E. Fox Letters: Ultrasound - Anne Lastman Letters: Religious freedom at risk - Tim Rebbechi Books: JOHN GERARD: Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. By Philip Caraman SJ - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Letters: Latin Course for Fluency Books: DOVE DESCENDING: A Journey into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, by Thomas Howard - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Books: THE BOOK OF ALL SAINTS, by Adrienne von Speyr - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Poetry: 11 September, 2001: The Towers - Will Elsin Books: DEIFICATION AND GRACE, by Daniel Keating - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Books: This month's selection from AD Books Reflection: The centrality of the tabernacle - Bishop John M. D'Arcy

11 September, 2001: The Towers

(A Little of how it made me feel)

They stood so straight and mighty to inspire
Manhattan's populace would never, ever tire
Of their great needles in the lowering sky.

Twin spires, the envy, up, up high
The envy, yes, the magnet, the steel
Which stamps a sucked-out, lucid, mind-sick, seal
On all-so-vivid image changes to minor seventh -
These dastardly cataclysms on September, eleventh!

Darkest, cunning, foul-souled, so torrid -
Disembowelling, dire, smoke-flashed burning, jumping ... aargh! ...

One has no forehead ...
What hit you say, what pure madness!
Return which enemy's fire?

Dig, dig, you hard-tasked heroes through the mess
Till you extract your precious, gruesome treasure
Annealed in asbestos and molten steel, our priceless, creepy, powder-flesh!

Now cries and phone-rings cease,
And provoke a silent whispering it seems ...
Oh no, it's just those newer sewer rats
Who've come to feast and multiply
And populate the earth.

[Great God, sweet Lord, out there, please hear us
And never more let such dread and horror near us.]

Réquiem aetérnam dóna éis, Dómine *
Et lux perpétua lúceat éis.

Te décet hymnus Déus in Sion, et tíbi reddétur vótum in Jerúsalem: exáudi oratiónem meam; ad te ómnis cáro veniet.

© Will Elsin 2001

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 22 No 8 (September 2009), p. 17