Day of Demonstrations

Another Grand Jury

does not hand

an indictment down (“I Can’t Breathe”), and for a

moment it seems as if I could be dreaming,

the helicopters there in the dream,

the sharp, loud

sounds of the chopping

of the air, the cutting it in thousands of pieces,

fissioning its atoms—yet the tower is there,

safe as houses, thousands of houses

balanced on top of each other. The falcons

who hunt above the roofs in Lower Manhattan

might be the descendants of the falcons who were hunting and

eating that morning, tearing the fur and

feathers in chunks and dust off their prey.

Where were you, where were the ones you loved.

I was sleeping in, that morning, 13

years ago, a hundred blocks north,

the choppers loud in my dream, louder, then

the phone rang in my dream, and a friend said, A

plane hit the World Trade Center, I

pictured a biplane, like a damselfly,

knocking a few chips off,

cells from a small wound to a body, like

knuckle skin. And then, on the screen,

the world began, and ended, and began,

and ended. This morning, the story of this country

is being told again,

on the street corners, the story of destruction,

of race, and rage, the law choppers and the

news choppers are chopping, and the child

of the two towers stands alone, its narrow

isosceles faces glinting in the white air.