(for the school children of P.S.234 and
Stuyvesant High School)

From the windows of P.S. 234 one child sees
bodies falling,
"Look the birds are on fire." Child, it is
the birds
of our innocence. Ever time a body tumbles
toward earth, two little boys make the sign of
the cross.
They do what they can. Stuyvesant High School
students
stumble out of Latin, Chem. I, Microbiology,
all transformed
into theater students wearing costumes of ash
and masks of dust.
Led over Brooklyn Bridge, several whom you do
not see
go with you.
Marianne Moore
Miss Marianne Moore, I know you're flying,
your magical cloak, like superman's, spread like
wings
above the children, your benign face
beneath your tricorn hat, "Like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge...
come flying."
Walt Whitman
"And you that shall cross from shore to shore
years hence are more
to me and more in my meditations than you might
suppose."
Oh, Walt, they do not wail nor weep, but they
will come
to weeping. There are not enough tears to wash
away
this morning.

Smoke sews Lady Liberty a new and terrible
dress.
People are falling or jumping,
not like the movies with sleek swan dives,
but grotesque, jerking tumbles, neckties
floating out
like pennants of distress.

"It avails not, time nor place--distance avails
not,
I am with you, men and women of a generation,
or ever so
many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and
sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd,
I was one of a crowd...."
Hart Crane
Somewhere in the fire is the man
with the nervous shark tooth.
Somewhere his cohorts are dancing obscene dances
to the goddess of death. Oh, Stamboul Queen,
you have seen the "teased remnants of the
skeletons
of cities." Great girders lean naked,
raw ribs of the city, stripped of flesh,
fires beneath them will burn seven weeks
later...
that ghastly sweet smell you cannot speak of.
Oh, humankind's soul is more fragil than flesh.
All of Them Together
Students, Hart Crane sees the Hand of Fire
behind you,
and somewhere in the crowd he is the sailor
stumbling
along beside you, trying to catch up with
Marianne Moore,
hovering above you, and Walt Whitman, tramping
along,
who keeps reciting, "Who knows,for all the
distance
I am as good as looking at you now, for all
you cannot see me?"

Walt, Hart, Marianne--in the broken glass,
let the children step lightly, let them pass
unscathed, as unscathed as any
on this day of agony.