During the first memorial service
a great and silent circle
was engineered to comfort.
It wasn’t silent enough
and certainly wasn’t enough, at all.
Bells tolled...8:45...9:03...10:05...10:28;
and names echoed within a whirlwind
but no souls were conjured from deadness
when angels’ wings reverently traced
the sloping rim of mourners
and rendered their wails to Heaven.
Back on earth, life endured
like an onslaught of graffiti,
grief squared and cubed
being the only reliable order.
The sounds of breathing, severed
a new language was forged
without patience for words.
Now, a shattered song reverberates
through a tangle of metropolis
murmuring in spectral echoes
pained by the recall of beauty
each memory soldered to a nightmare.