And when we’re evacuated—mind snapped and snapping

snapped back—in the fundament of things. What you said,

explosions so fierce you feared your eardrums punctured,

the building shook, it moved so much you thought it would crash,

I was, you said, thinking of you so much, you hoped, you said,

not too many were dead, afraid that if this is war

a chemical-warfare agent is in the air, you couldn’t see a thing,

heavy, mud-colored, swirling, brown, black, grey, 

fine dust particles, it looked like a solid curtain of nightmare,

you said, and, you said, you were frightened. And tower fragments

the size of football fields falling in every direction, seawater

pumped from the Hudson through hoses attached to fire-trucks

near West Street, and at night, candles lit at windows

to let the others know they’re not alone. Small park

across Queens Boulevard, the leafless oak against the dark

green dusk air, strips of shadow along the pavement’s edge.

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time—“And how long,

my God, have I cried out the violence to you, but you do not

intervene, how long have I cried out for help, my God,

but you do not listen”—from the Book of the prophet Habakkuk. 

Today, sunny and windy, blustery tonight and cold.

“Marine and Army May Scour Caves, U.S. General Says,”

headline in the Times. No longer in the government,

but on the inside with those in the government, the Taliban

in Afghanistan won’t last another month, he says, Sudan

or, maybe, next the Bekaa Valley, but Iraq, there’s no evidence

Iraq was involved, but we feel it is, we feel it, he says,

and anyway, he smiles, conditions are, now, ideal to take it.

Acid mist, volatile organic compounds, dangerous levels

of asbestos; rising and spiraling white steam;

blowtorch-produced green vapor, pit fumes,

white, stinking, transformed in pink light until clouds

of smoke obscure it. A common fate pain can’t forget;

incessantly pulled apart; in this memory’s light.