How can I grieve for you,
you victims of evil,
you people caught
by the bombs
of flying concrete and
collapsing steel?
I did not know you.

But I can cry for
the slender columns
of buildings
familiar in their
grace and symmetry,
as they slowly fall to earth
in showers
of dust and paper.

The treacherous sky
has left beleaguered,
smoke-blackened fingers
pointing toward its haloed sun,
interred in piles of
vaporized hopes
and death.

I had, with children,
looked out
at the far reaches
of the city
from your vaunted spires
and marvelled
at its busyness.
Like others,
I had used those towers
as beacons
across the harbor
and down the town,
the town
whose importance
now seems stilled,
unviewed
from that beloved aerie.

So I grieve for the sights
no longer seen
and the loss of
this nation’s innocence.
I cannot fight to exact
a revenge upon those
unseen commandos
of the sunswept skies.  
 
Rather, let us all seek
to rise, as silvered towers,
above that easy
vengeance.