When the Towers Fell by Galway Kinnell

WHEN THE TOWERS FELL

From our high window we saw the towers
with their bands and blocks of light
brighten against a fading sunset,
saw them at any hour glitter and live
as if the spirits inside them sat up all night
calculating profit and loss, saw them reach up
to steep their tops in the until then invisible
yellow of sunrise, grew so used to them
often we didn’t see them, and now,
not seeing them, we see them.

The banker is talking to London.
Humberto is delivering breakfast sandwiches.
The trader is already working the phone.
The mail sorter has started sorting the mail.
...povres et riches
...poor and rich
Sages et folz, prestres et laiz
Wise and foolish, priests and laymen
Nobles, villains, larges et chiches
Noblemen, serfs, generous and m
Petiz et grans et beaulx et laiz
Short and tall and handsome and homely

The plane screamed low down lower Fifth Avenue
lifted at the Arch, someone said, shaking the dog walkers
in Washington Square Park, drove for the north tower,
struck with a heavy thud, releasing a huge bright gush
of blackened fire, and vanished, leaving a hole
the size and shape a cartoon plane might make
if it had passed harmlessly through and were flying away now,
on the far side, back into the realm of the imaginary.

Some with torn clothing, some bloodied,
some limping at top speed like children
in a three-legged race, some half dragged,
some intact in neat suits and dresses,
they straggle out of step up the avenues,
each dusted to a ghostly whiteness,
their eyes rubbed red as the eyes of a Zahoris,
who can see the dead under the ground.

Some died while calling home to say they were O.K.
Some died after over an hour spent learning they would die.
Some died so abruptly they may have seen death from within it.
Some broke windows and leaned out and waited for rescue.
Some were asphyxiated.
Some burned, their very faces caught fire.
Some fell, letting gravity speed them through their long moment.
Some leapt hand in hand, the elasticity in last bits of love-time letting — I wish
I could say — their vertical streaks down the sky happen more lightly.

At the high window, where I’ve often stood
to escape a nightmare, I meet
the single, unblinking eye
lighting the all-night sniffing and lifting
and sifting for bodies, pieces of bodies, anything that is not nothing,
in a search that always goes on
somewhere, now in New York and Kabul.

She stands on a corner holding up a picture
of her husband. He is smiling. In today’s
wind shift few pass. Sorry sorry sorry.
She startles. Suppose, down the street, that headlong lope...
or, over there, that hair so black it’s purple...
And yet, suppose some evening I forgot
The fare and transfer, yet got by that way
Without recall — lost yet poised in traffic.
Then I might find your eyes...
It could happen. Sorry sorry good luck thank you.
On this side it is “amnesia,” or forgetting the way home,
on the other, “invisibleness,” or never in body returning.
Hard to see clearly in the metallic mist,
or through the sheet of mock reality
cast over our world, bourne that no creature ever born
pokes its way back through, and no love can tear.

The towers burn and fall, burn and fall —
in a distant, shot, smokestacks spewing oily earth remnants out of the past.
Schwarze Milch der Fruhe wir trinken sie abends
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
we drink it at midday at morning we drink it at night
wir trinken und trinken
We drink it and drink it
This is not a comparison but a corollary,
not a likeness but a lineage
in the twentieth-century history of violent death —
black men in the South castrated and strung up from trees,
soldiers advancing through mud at ninety thousand dead per mile,
train upon train headed eastward made up of boxcars shoved full to the
corners with Jews and Gypsies to be enslaved or gassed,
state murder of twenty, thirty, forty million of its own,
atomic blasts wiping cities off the earth, firebombings the same,
death marches, starvations, assassinations, disappearances,
entire countries turned into rubble, minefields, mass graves.
Seeing the towers vomit these black omens, that the last century dumped into
this one, for us to dispose of, we know
they are our futures, that is our own black milk crossing the sky: wir shaufeln
ein Grab in den Luften da liegt man nicht eng we’re digging
a grave in the sky there’ll be plenty of room to lie down there

Burst jet fuel, incinerated aluminum, steel fume, crushed marble, exploded
granite, pulverized drywall, mashed concrete, berserked plastic,
gasified mercury, cracked chemicals, scoria, vapor
of the vaporized — wafted here
from the burnings of the past, draped over
our island up to streets regimented
into numbers and letters, breathed across
the great bridges to Brooklyn and the waiting sea:
astringent, miasmic, empyreumatic, slick,
freighted air too foul to take in but we take it in,
too gruesome for seekers of the amnesiac beloved
to breathe but they breathe it and you breathe it.

A photograph of a woman hangs from a string
at his neck. He doesn’t look up.
He stares down at the sidewalk of flagstone
slabs laid down in Whitman’s century, gutter edges
rasped by iron wheels to a melted roundedness:
a conscious intelligence envying the stones.
Nie staja sie, sa.
They do not become, they are.
Nie nad to, myslalem.
Nothing but that, I thought,
zbrzydziwszy sobie
now loathing within myself
wszystko co staje sie
everything that becomes.

And I sat down by the waters of the Hudson,
by the North Cove Yacht Harbor, and thought
how those on the high floors must have suffered: knowing
they would burn alive, and then, burning alive.
and I wondered, Is there a mechanism of death
that so mutilates existence no one
gets over it not even the dead?
Before me I saw, in steel letters welded
to the steel railing posts, Whitman’s words
written as America plunged into war with itself: City of the world!...
Proud and passionate city — mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
words of a time of illusions. Then I remembered
what he wrote after the war was over and Lincoln dead:
I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought.
They themselves were fully at rest — they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d...

In our minds the glassy blocks
succumb over and over into themselves,
slam down floor by floor into themselves.

They blow up as if in reverse, exploding
downward and outward, billowing
through the streets, engulfing the fleeing.

As each tower goes down, it concentrates
into itself, transforms itself
infinitely slowly into a black hole

infinitesimally small: mass
without space, where each light,
each life, put out, lies down within us.


Copyright © 2002 by Galway Kinnell. All rights reserved by the author. First appeared in The NEW YORKER, Sept. 16th, 2002 issue. Published in Strong is Your Hold by Houghton Mifflin.

Galway Kinnell's When the Towers Fell

Visit the New Yorker to listen to Galway Kinnell reading his poem, "When the Towers Fell", written in response to 9/11 events.

Laying it to rest...

My response to a conversation we had about Thich Nhat Hanh's piece which was circulated post-9/11:




First, thank you for the conversation Monday night! Andrea, I didn't mean to be negative about a piece of writing (and a writer) that you appreciate, but I'm glad that we were able to talk about it!

In light of that conversation, I think it's necessary for us to reconsider whether or not this is poetry. By this, I mean that we can't easily dismiss this as not poetry. Just because it is written in free form (I haven't looked carefully at the prosody - line, meter, and rhythm of the poem so I can't say for certain) doesn't mean it isn't a poem.

The truth is, this could very certainly be poetry -- just very bad poetry (in my humble opinion) -- unless he says specifically that this is not poetry. So, I will approach this as a poetic text (otherwise, I have very little to offer except banal reflections).

I agree that this is a very poignant piece that strikes at the heart of most readers who have been touched by the violence of our recent histories. I think that there will always be a need for reflections such as this one written by Thich Nhat Hanh, whether or not those pieces are poetry or prose or whatever form(s) of art. Where there is need, there will always be room/space made available for this kind of writing, however good or bad the author creates it. It really is up to the discerning reader whether or not they prefer a certain kind of writing over another kind.

Not unlike the both of you, this piece evokes in me a visceral response. That is, I react more because of the context of the events that motivated TNH to write this prayer. When I (re)read this, I am reminded of the feelings that I felt when I saw the tower fall, when I heard of the airplane crashes, etc. There are certainly elements employed in this piece which in totality tug at my heart strings. If we look only at the effects produced in the reader which are evoked by this writing, then in a way it is poetic -- but not necessarily excellent poetry.

[On a side note -- Isn't this similar to biblical texts and theology? I mean, how do we reconcile the fact that there are many texts and certain kinds of theology that are "wrong" in some ways but which nevertheless form a strong basis for people's faiths/spirituality?]

No doubt there are many others who respond like we did-- we are called to respond to the prayer on an emotional and thoughful/reflective way. That was my first reaction. But, that is only one kind of appreciation. Beyond the initial "tug" at my emotions, after the brief moment of quiet meditation and reflection, I become distracted/frustrated by the technical form of the piece.

My reaction is colored by the awareness of other kinds of writing that evoke in me such similar responses -- writings that are better crafted and whose contents speak of the same (different) issues, raising the same (more complex) questions.

That consciousness, added to my biases against his personality (here, insert the thoughts that Mai-Anh has already articulated), make me less appreciative as a reader and writer. I am, unfortunately, biased against such kinds of writing (in a creative writing program TNH's piece would never pass muster as literary craft) because I think that there is much more that can be done... that is, this could be presented and has been presented with more artful aesthetics, with purer (?) motives (purer than what I'm willing to allow for his writings) that I can see.

I'm reminded of the poetry world's outcry when Laura Bush wanted to have a poetry reading in support of the war... It was, in essence, an abuse of the powers of poetic art, which in itself isn't uncommon, but it was so flagrantly displayed. On a personal level, I feel that somehow TNH was using poetry to not only diffuse a situation and remind us about peace and reconciliation, but I wish he could have done it better. It makes (some) folks misunderstand the craft so that they think if you need to use poetry for practical purposes, then you must present it in this simplified, formulaic way in order to have meaning and application in the real world.

We all know of course, there is a difference between simplicity and simplistic poetry. That distinction needs to be made, but I don't know whether or not I'm capable of talking about that now.

Read his text at: "Rest in Peace" on the website Images and Voices of Hope.

New software analyst at TXU!

Introducing my little brother: TAT. (He hates being called "little brother." He's a big, strapping young man. NOT baby brother. NOT the young one in the family. NOT the PK recovering from PK-syndrome. In fact, he's pretty cool now... handles himself very nicely with Vietnamese and English. Ladies, in fact, he is a MUSICIAN, and knows how to translate songs. Any day now he'll be writing his own music. Keep an eye on him now!) He isn't particularly fond of me using the family nickname in public, so I've imposed a new one on his personage... He's got a hot new job at one of the larger companies in TX, so now he is incommunicato. I can't seem to find him anywhere. When I call him, I get this very official message asking me to leave him a message and he'll return the call. Of course, I'm not a client so I haven't heard from him in weeks now... I've put in 4 personal calls, and have asked the parents whether he's still alive. I think he is.

Poetry with a bit of cheeeeese...

Thich Nhat Hanh...

Dr. Bieler asks why I have such strong reactions to his poetry. That's precisely it. The content of his messages -- I cannot say. But the form with which he articulates his messages... As a spiritual leader, he has immmense power and influence. His words create ripple effects and he is admired and respected because of his ideology, his spirituality, and his influence in the political scenes. In these areas, he is a strong leader. As a poet, not so much.

Outside of certain contexts, his poetry falls flat for me. I do not find it objectionable that he uses poetry as one (of many) mediums to convey his messages of peace, love, and reconciliation. But I think there is a certain leniency that is granted to people like him which places less of a burden on them regarding technical craft.

Here, it becomes complicated b/c of questions like: What is meant by "people like him?" "What kinds of burdens?" Why less of a burden? Who imposes these responsibilities/burdens? Who carries them? Why? Why not?