The Naming: A Chant for 9/11

With Thoughts on How Grief Needs Rhythm

THE NAMING

Lopez, Jurgens, Lozowsky, O'Connor, Lomax
(Shoes, and spirals, dust and the falling flowers)
Diaz, Dingle, Galletti, DiPasquale,
Katsimatides

Wounds widen the remembering earth.
Closed eyes see beyond the flames.
Grief opens hands to feel the wind.
Heart beats like ocean and hears the names:

DiStefano, Eisenberg, Chung, Green, Dolan,
Women running suddenly in their high heels)
Penny, York, Duarte, Elferis, Sliwak,
Yamamadala,

Closed eyes see beyond the flames.
Grief opens hands to feel the wind.
Heart beats like ocean and hears the names.
Wounds widen the remembering earth:

Weinstein, Villanueva, West, Sadaque,
(Spirals, dust and spiralling dust and hours)
Bowman, Burns, Kawauchi, Buchanan, Reilly,
Reese, Ognibene,

Grief opens hands to feel the wind.
Heart beats like ocean and hears the names.
Wounds widen the remembering earth.
Closed eyes see beyond the flames.

Kushitani, Ueltzhoffer, Wong, Ferrugio,
(Breathed in only in or beyond the naming),
Inghilterra, Tzemis, Liangthanasam,
Coladonato—

Heart beats like ocean and hears the names.
Wounds widen the remembering earth.
Closed eyes see beyond the flames.
Grief opens hands to feel the wind.

Sanchez, Talbot, Afflito, Siskopoulos
(Every question with a long sob of naming)
Tarantino, Zempoaltecatl, Thorpe, Koo,
Stergiopoulos,
Zion, Zinzi, Song, Shahid, Santiago,
Ortiz, Pabon, Ou, O’Neill, Newton-Carter,
Miller, Mohammed,
Zakhary, Campbell,
Deming, DiFranco,
Chowdhury, Blackwell,
Zucker, McDowell,
Goldstein, Basmajian . . .

Wounds widen the remembering earth.
Closed eyes see beyond the flames.
Grief opens hands to feel the wind.
Heart beats like ocean and hears the names.

9/11 poem and sculpture at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

HOW GRIEF NEEDS METER

When I was asked to write a poem for the installation of Meredith Bergmann’s sculpture in commemoration of 9/11, I sat with the request for months. I contemplated the image of the moving, terrifying sculpture with its pierced hands; I felt the depths of my own grief and that of the city and country I love; I brought my inner depths of will, heart, and soul into communion with the wills, hearts, and souls of those who had died and those whose lives had been gutted by the deaths.

How to write about such a thing?

No writing could come. No ideas, no words. It was all truly before and beyond words.

But not beyond Meter.

Meter is a pulse, not a thought.

Meter is a communion in itself; it is a state, a way.

One day after months, a rhythm came, and with it a meter, and with it a stanza: the Sapphic stanza, rhythm of hope and grace, rhythm of the heart.

And after it trailed meanings, words, ideas, an image:

women, running.

And this ancient rhythm, developed on an island that remained matriarchal even after patriarchy had begun its 5000 year reign elsewhere—an island where meter was a holy language honored by priestesses in whom the sacred took the form of nature and poetry and dance and love—this rhythm finally opened the poem to the memories of those who had died.

/ u | / u | / u u | / u | / u |

/ u | / u | / u u | / u | / u |

/ u | / u | / u u | / u | / u |

/ u u | / u

And the Sapphic stanza expanded in my heart and mind to encompass names—names originating from all over the globe, knit together, flowed together, in death as in their lives in this capacious city— knit together now, not by work or money nor even by friendship and love, but by something even more primal, a meter, a rhythm shared physically among human voices, human throats, human ears, human hearts even as it has been carried, bodiless and exact, across centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries.

And as I sat with the names and felt the grief and love of such a wild dance of humanity blossom inside me, and as I contemplated the agonizing bronze hands of the statue, another rhythm emerged.

It was a counter-rhythm, a rhythm of wind and body, stone and timeless courage, a rhythm that could change and evolve and intertwine and interweave and transform and wait for us, meet us, still, unshaken, beckoning through the almost endless chant of names—almost infinitely greater than even the chant of these names—those martyred by the 5000 year tragedy of patriarchal violence, greed, hierarchy, monotheism, capitalism, oppression, war, separation, exile.

This was the rhythm of the elements, of nature, of the Goddesses of earth and sky, wind and love and hope.

It had the last words.