SEVEN FOR NINE ELEVEN

Songs of Sorrow,

      Songs of Hope

       Seven for Nine Eleven

                I.

September morning---

 Clear and calm …

 Streaking, screaming jets

 Collide with the crisp serenity,

 Crushing the dreams of thousands

 Of world citizens

 In one prolonged

 Agonizing instant---

 Altering perceptions and events

 In a tangle

 Of terror,

 Toppling towers,

 And barbaric entombment

              II.

 All the fallen heroes

 Rushing to rescue

 Innocent victims of violence…

 Trapped between their selfless bravery

 And fanatic hatred

 Focused on annihilation

 Of all hope and happiness…

Gone in the momentous collapse

 Of monuments and unsung miracles…

 All the fallen heroes,

 Mourned and remembered,

 Forevermore.

             III.

Bewildered with rage 

 And weeping,

 We gather and huddle

 In streets and parks,

 Embracing strangers, 

 Posting our private grief

 On walls and chain-link fences…

 Coming together in the spirit 

 Of ourselves

 As though this magnitude

 Of love

 Could stifle and smother

 The animosity,

 The atrocity,

 That has befallen us.

            IV.

Weep, world…

 Many lost their lives today.

Weep for clashing cultures

 Exploding on the world.

 The eleventh of September

 Collides with human destiny…

 Ending all innocence

 And immunity.

Weep, world,

 Weep in sorrow…

 Many lost their lives today…

 Yet, beneath the smoldering debris,

 A new spirit struggles to erupt.

              V.

 A fragile experiment,

 Begun in a time

 When humanity defied tyranny

 And sought a sanctuary

 Of liberty…

Once begun,

 There was no assurance

 It would survive…

Even now

 Tyrants and barbarians

 Threaten the frangible frame of freedom.

             VI.

 We will not die---

 There is a gentle presence

 That gathers strength 

 In our awareness---

 Through all the adversity,

 Through all the tears,

 Through all that perished

 On that frail September day,

 We find the substance

 Of ourselves

 Embedded in all who have gone

 Before us…

 Grasping intangible threads 

 Binding us...  

 

            VII.

 Celebrate the loved ones

 We have lost…

 Celebrate the right to sing

 Of one another…

 Cherish the links

 Connecting us…

 To dare to dream,

 To seek to hope,

 To make festivals

 Of images and sounds

 Leaping like magic

 Across an electric consciousness

 Like shooting stars

 Across the cosmos 

 Confronting chaos 

 With the simple song of ourselves.

© Copyright John Gilbert, September 12, 2011, 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

AUTUMN IN NEW YORK--- A YEAR LATER

September, another Autumn in New York. Jerome had started walking north from Washington Square Park. He had started around 4 p.m. after meeting his friend George in the park. They sat in the park where George had seen his "butterfly girl"and the whole experience seem as vivid as a year ago when he became obsessed about finding her. Suddenly seeing her at the ferry had bolstered George's spirits, but his hopes were dashed when he saw her on the dock as the ferry was pulling away. So near and yet never meeting.

Jerome felt George's angst. George could not let go of the vision of the stranger in the park as a butterfly flew around her head and landed as if by command on the book the woman was reading. He felt that karma had teased him and cheated him.

Jerome found himself in Chelsea and suddenly felt a tinge of Déjà vu. A year ago he had walked this area, strains of Autumn in New York playing in his head:

Glimmering crowds
And shimmering clouds
In canyons of steel
They're making me feel, I'm home...

But this year it was different. There was no celebrating of first-nighting--- only the bittersweet feeling of joys past and emptiness ahead. No more renaissances he thought... You've gone to the well too often, and now Time betrays you.

Even so, there were new melodies that lingered, and lyrics that tried to penetrate the hard veneer that clung to him. For Jerome, September was always the end and the beginning.

Autumn in New York
Is often mingled with pain

Jerome felt the pain. That was the yin and yang of September, the sad/happy, bitter/sweet reservoir of feeling and perception, the ultimate quest that gave him the energy to overcome impediments to his work. 

His work. What was that exactly? Some cryptic destiny. He could think of his action only as process, a means of engaging Time to make something tangible, authentic...wonderful. It could be anything, as long as it was wrought from emptiness of Time and Space and placed in the continuum of so-called reality, whatever that is. It could be a poem, music, painting, a chair, a feast, an equation, a story, or just anything that might be pulled from the empty terrain through an encounter with Time. Something created in and through Time became something substantive, something that might endure, a somethingness as opposed to nothingness.

There had been decades of triumphs and defeats. His road was always rough, with terrain that at times seemed impassible. He felt the despair of emptiness, and wondered if the Muse had deserted him. In some ways, his life had been in pursuit of THE MUSE. He remembered the many lost works as the result of such carelessness and disregard for history. Now decades had passed, and his sense of loss overwhelmed him into silence.

Not this far. . .I never knew I would surviveBeyond a barrierSelf conceived and self imposedSo long agoThat empty pages found a wayTo mock my delusion,Imitating the nothingnessOf anticipated emptiness.Now these words . . .I never knew I could reviveAn unknown continentRemembered, yet emergingSo far awayThat silent chambers now resoundTo shape a new perception,Celebrating the resonance . . .Restoring such abundant songs!

Now as he walked north the Chelsea, the creative energy seemed to drain from him, and he was confronted by a sense of doom. The very thought of impending disaster seemed too melodramatic for him. He knew that he just needed to engage. But he also was plagued by the fear that his mental capacity would dissolve into anonymity... a new malady of the twenty-first century. He smiled as he thought whatever work might survive would be anonymous.