9 Eleven Philip Peereboom, 9/12 00.26, Delft

The pear tree blossom, 9/11,
And all the souls that went to heaven,
In giant falls of shiny water,
A father, son, a mum, a daughter;

The big, black square, so dark, so vast,
Built on the remnants of the past;
Where first the ashes that were lives,
Returned to earth, like bees to hives.

No fountain, no big, spurting jets,
But downstream to a place of rest,
To rise again from her warm womb,
So sacred, still, so like a tomb.

The cries, the screams, the sirens, silence,
The fire, water, earth, this island;
The noise, the smoke, the air so black,
The phoenix rose, the light came back;

A pear tree, struggling underneath,
Charred, dying, fighting, third degree;
The banks of death, the river Hudson,
A sad old stream, so full of flotsam;

When summer died, it turned to fall,
The pear tree wasn’t dead at all,
Deep in itself, in nigh-dead veins
It sipped the water from the rains;

A victim, nurtured by mankind,
Regained its soul, its strength of mind;
It grew for better, not for worse
To blossom in a wily world.

A prime example, life in death,
The smell of perfume, from foul breath,
And all the trees in Battery Park
Were smiling through their soft brown bark.

When all this water splashes down
To kiss the square hole in the ground,
We know that out of darkness comes
A light, announced by beating drums.