The number and the names is a brief memorial to the loss of life, a counterbalance to fear aroused by acts of violence and confrontation against the innocent.

There is little distinction between war and terrorism to those affected by either. The loss of innocence must not mean the abandonment of hope, we must always communicate.

Mac Dunlop

11.9.01

Veiled tides
wash your buildings
away
before
the sea

there lie
your
bomb burnt bodies
their cenotaph the street

counting upon the dead
to inform you of the missing

a crescent of smoke
weaves across the sky

a holy war
for god's
asylum
observed by unbelieving eyes

The number and the names...

We drown
before we die
in history
repeated

in the image
of plane-hit towers
uninsured
against grief.

Numbers do not compare
-in ashes to ashes
inside
me and you-
with the truth in buildings.

the dream of flight
once celebrated freely
against gravity
now unites
New York, Rwanda, Shavil et Shatila
in infamy on the pin-pricked map.

the dust of euphoria
collapsing into the streets
finally arrives
on the wind across the ocean

weighted by the rain
drowning
rescuers and rescued
enemies and friends
in tears and dust.

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