specificity of twisted metal,
shattered slabs of concrete,
what once were floors, now
become the weight of death
in a huge savage funeral pyre
still smoking months after
with the flesh of thousands
those two tall slim volumes
reaching up to touch the sky
were destroyed from the sky,
stricken out of powder blue sky,
so they collapsed like books
unable to hold worlds, words
which fragmented to letters
which shattered to shards
so sharp that even thinking
of them cuts, drawing blood
from our foreheads, so we
bleed without understanding,
just the same way we breed,
birth being death’s beginning
thousands died and could
receive no decent burial,
smoked as the heap smoked,
sometimes sent its stench
out to sea, sometimes north
into the city, news more
elemental than a newspaper