September 11, 2004

• 

  
  

  

  
  

  
  

  a short poem for humanity this morning by Michael F. Nyiri

  
  

  Sept. 12, 2001 5:00am pdt

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  There is an ill wind blowing through our realities right now,

  
  

  A sense of dread, a thought unsaid, substantial emotion bursting forth

  
  

  Imagined latitudes of worth, the ever present feelings of safety have fled.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  The world is not the same world this morning.

  
  

  We have lost a precious memory of reality

  
  

  We have lost what innocence we thought we had

  
  

  We have lost a world view that has been changing for two thousand years

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  There is confusion, thoughts of retribution, who can I turn to? God and man

  
  

  We watched, we cried, we saw a great chunk of humanity perish

  
  

  And now, as we begin this morning in the shaky aftermath of uncertainty

  
  

  I feel we need to know there is much more to cherish

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  My thoughts, and yours, are with the souls of this incredible tragedy

  
  

  We suffer with them, as we question our leaders, our redeemers, and our souls as well

  
  

  It is with another steely resolve which we have to meet the day

  
  

  Because what we lost yesterday can never be regained

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Much will be remembered in history

  
  

  If history survives the implications

  
  

  A tragedy of biblical proportions portends a world to stop and pray

  
  

  And my heart goes out to all humanity today.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Nothing in life prepared us

  
  

  Nothing we feel, read, or see

  
  

  So the morning of the rest of what’s left of our sanity

  
  

  We’ll just have to breathe deep, wait and see.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  For if this is the end time predicted so long ago,

  
  

  Then we will fight the battle for good and for God

  
  

  And if this ruthless murder of a way of life is the fault of the few

  
  

  Or of an incorrect ideology, then we will eventually punish this

  
  

  Grand infraction.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Humanity is just not the same today.

  
  

  We grieve for our friends, families, and unseen irrationalities.

  
  

  If we naively believed we could live life without enemies,

  
  

  We know now that this is not so.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  If we felt sad for that part of the world when they suffer each day

  
  

  As they have suffered for centuries, because we saw their pain

  
  

  on television, we felt sad from afar

  
  

  Now that sadness is at our front door

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  The skyline of America has changed.

  
  

  But not the resolve which makes up a global power

  
  

  Through all insanity, there will be some voice of reason

  
  

  And everything will change after this.

  
  

  This morning the world is not the same.

  
  

   

  
  

  I wrote the above poem on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001 to send to my email list. The following weekend, I composed the composite image as an “alternate image” to the photos of the WTC in flames pierced by jetliners which were permeating the news. The image above is one of the very first composite artworks I ever composed. The original webpage is still standing here with guestbook and link to the essay I wrote to accompany the piece. The piece below was written and first posted to the web along with the image on Sept. 19th, 2001. I am posting these poems here on my Xanga on this third anniversary of the most horrible day in memory. MFN

  
  

  

  
  

  
  Perhaps The Missing Were Prematurely Raptured
   
  

  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri Sept. 19, 2001 7:15 p.m pdt.

  
  

   

  
  

  A friend and I, we have talked so much,
  Remember simpler times, and in memories, touch
  The very fibre of our broken souls,
  Even as we commisserate, a lonely darkness grows.
  We were remembering the parts of hearts,
  Our feelings that lives had not been given starts.
  For on the morning of the eleventh, when
  A large part of humanity met their worldly end
  A little part of our hearts went too
  And even a week later this hole’s an open wound.

  
  

   

  
  

  I’ve been trying to set my heart straight you see
  Recover it’s heft, get a handle on reality
  But I keep reading different stories,
  And each succeeding day new worries,
  Arrive, about hearing of new souls who soon might be gone
  From this Earth by a taste of American bombs.
  And I read of the immigrants, who fled other places
  With large traces of evil memories
  Which time never erases,
  And now they see that the terror follows them here
  I read of their plight, and my heart sheds new tears.

  
  

   

  
  

  A woman at work had a sad look on her face
  We have to get over this feeling, I said, we have to erase
  These horrible grievings for humanity’s sorrow
  Because we have to get out of our beds tomorrow.
  Friends email with sorrow which wracks me, to cry
  Again and again, why did they have to die?
  But resolution, and stamina, are needed, we know
  Because this kind is the world of today, and we grow
  Stronger with knowledge, and we didn’t know personally
  That this kind of grief is the grief of humanity.

  
  

   

  
  

  My friend told me they can’t find many bodies
  In the rubble of New York’s Once Magnificent Towers.
  Only a few hundred out of thousands who are “missing”
  Have been found.
  Perhaps this is the beginning of the end,
  And perhaps the missing were prematurely raptured.
  By God’s Hand as an early escape from
  A coming tribulation on the ground.

  
  

   

  
  

  Those who seem to be constantly grieving, the sad, the meek,
  Shall inherit the world, says the Book.
  We shall perhaps soon join our New York friends in Heaven
  And will rejoice with Jesus while evil souls cook.
  My friend and I talk to console our broken hearts
  We mention much, discuss till it hurts, in broken fits and starts.
  We do know that the New Yorkers passed to Heaven
  And we can take some kind of solace in this knowledge.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  • 8:23 am
  • 5 Comments