‘9/11’ From the Vantage Point of the Upper West Side: Poetry

By Art Stamford

Lost my office that day, but that was it –

At home on the West Side when the first plane hit.

The Day Begins

A slow day ahead – I was taking my time –

got a call from the office just before nine.

“There’s been an explosion – what should I do?

The ceiling’s on fire, the conference room too.”

“Better get out,” I quickly said,

“you’re not in this job to wind up dead.”

She called later saying she’d made it out

but so many others I wondered about –

so many everywhere trapped inside,

nowhere to escape to, nowhere to hide.

         Brief Encounter

There’d been a woman the day before

in the cattle-car ride to the 78th floor.

A muted print dress, a wrinkle to her nose –

we shared little nothings as the cattle car rose.

Amusement shone from her intent quiet look,

then mock fear as the cattle car shook.

I thought of the little bit we had said,

thought of her now, most likely dead.

Was she now pulp in the rubble’s crush,

quiet eyes like a deer in the downward rush?

    Paralegal

Bertrand, the para with the funny name,

he’d have been at his desk playing a game, 

liked cookies for breakfast, he’d be chewing away.

What the f— is this? was all he would say.  

          At Home

Thank God, you’re alive, I heard again and again –

never knew they cared, not until then. 

A stranger called randomly from the British Isles –

a gesture to America in its current trials.

          The Next Day

Saw the wreckage myself –

          it was really real.

Paper blown everywhere –

            mangled steel.

An acrid smell,

              the fumes of hell

hung over New York downtown.

A somber hush,

            columns of dust   

in the spot where the buildings went down.

At home that night

               I set out to write

what I felt on that dire day.

It’s too rhetorical

              but it’s at least historical.

Here it is what I had to say:

          The Fires Still Burn

So now we know. The ghosts rise from the shattered steel – 

Hiroshima, Nagasaki – vanished –

vanished worlds of living flesh, palpable

flesh made insubstantial –

blistered, seared, merest vapor –

blown away. 

The ghosts still rise from the shattered steel –

Tokyo, Dresden – merest vapor.

Thousands now burn in lower Manhattan,

which never knew such things could be.

   2026 – 25 Years After

Should one day alone mean that much to me –

should I really give much of a damn?

My office was high in One WTC

but that’s not who I am.

I’m not like the guy who texts “Semper Fi”

every year at the fatal hour.

What’s he gung-ho about? I can’t figure it out –

and I really didn’t like that damn tower.

A box on its side, sterile inside,

it creaked in the slightest breeze.

It’d go all day long with that sad groaning song

as if it might buckle its knees.

Glory, much glory to the heroes who died –

but how ’bout the nobodies dead at their side? 

Benny, the back-office broker’s clerk,

who was not too sure he liked his work.

Florid Ms. Fussy cursing her nails,

stooped cleaning ladies with their mops and pails.

The delivery men who no habla, señor,

the toilet-roll man slogging floor to floor.

They also died, left a husband, a wife –

remember them too, tiny smudges of life.

And the lesson that day has not gone away

 but carries on mostly neglected.

We’ve had to learn once more from each recent war

 we’re not prepared for the unexpected.

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