Galway Kinnell -

Galway Kinnell has a poem called When the Towers Fell, about, obviously 9-11.   Amazing, isn't it, how we know which towers are meant.  It is a marvelous poem but I give only the last stanza which relates to what has just been said.


In our minds the glassy blocks succumb over and over,
slamming down floor by floor into themselves,
blowing up as if in reverse, exploding

downward and rolling outward,
the way, in the days of the gods, a god
might rage through the streets, overtaking 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.


- Galway Kinnell