Let me tell you about this city.
Let me tell you.

Last winter I came out of the subway, and ascended the stairs into unexpected snow. I love snow, city snow even, but suddenly -- there I was again. My heart racing. An ice grip constricting my throat. It wasn't snow, but ashes.

Oh no, I thought. Don't take the joy of snow away from me, too. I stood quite still, just watching the white flakes in the air, unable to move into the present, into September 12th, into 2004.

{But I'm here now. Things are better. Aren't they?}

And a bird, as surprised as I was by the sudden snowburst, was flying up 35th Street, wings beating against the wind, so that we were both motionless it seemed. The bird, and me, and the space between us, and the bricks of the buildings and the swirl of air and memory and frozen water.

Whose soul was that?

It's hard not to talk about 9/11 right now and not talk about politics. But I'm not going to talk about the campaigning at Ground Zero. I just want to tell you about this city.

Earlier this week, the edge of Hurricane Frances nearly shut down the transit system in New York. There were only 2 trains running from Brooklyn to Manhattan -- the C and A -- and it seemed that all 8 million of us were crammed on to it, for a nice two hour commute. (Who needs anthrax, I was thinking, all they need to louse up the works is a few inches of rain.) Someone asked me later if people had flipped out on each other, and I said, "of course not. We all acted like New Yorkers" -- that is, resigned to overcome whatever the city had to throw at us today, and suddenly becoming an expert on how to cope. Just like that day, crossing the bridge with a million people just trying to get home.

Let me tell you about this city. We're bigger than anything you can throw at us.

It's quite late so I'm just going to read you some poetry. Here's one that Liz posted up on her site in memory of 9/11/01:

Riding the Elevator Into the Sky
by Anne Sexton (1975)

As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.

Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking toward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor: small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something?
some useful door?
somewhere?
up there.

M E-L posted this on September 11, 2004
It is filed under Community

It is also indexed with the following tags: 9/11 | Poetry |