Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Slept until noon, utterly exhausted. My ribs hurt from sneezing so much and my shoulders are tight and sore from tension. The air sure isn’t helping my costochondritis any. Packed up some stuff to take into the volunteer depots and discovered they’ve got all the supplies they need right now. I’ll leave the bag packed until they run out again. I’m sure the amount of donations will slow down in the weeks to come. It’s going to be a long haul, digging out and putting things back together. I’m both amazed at and proud of the city where I live. I’m not sure you would see this anywhere else: more volunteers than they can use, and supplies to overflowing. The Sally Army was asking for 100,000 square feet of warehouse space for the non-perishable goods that have been donated. Some of the food has been redistributed to homeless shelters. Folks are lining up for 7 hours to give blood. People are coming in from other places to volunteer, but it’s so hard to get into the city right now that I think most of the people volunteering are locals.
Kath forwarded this message on to me from one of our friends in Britain. This really touched me.
Dear US Folks,
Thought you’d like to know that here in the UK, people are as devastated as you Americans must be. The TV news programmes here are still broadcasting continuous updates and reviews of the east coast terrorist attacks and its aftermath. British flags fly at half-mast all over the country, as a gesture of respect and sorrow.
And in my city of Plymouth, the Mayflower steps (yes, from whence your Pilgrim Fathers set sail) are covered all over in flowers; single stems, bouquets and sprays laid there by locals who needed to find a way to express their sorrow and to share in your shock and grief.
This was truly an international crime, and we global villagers are rallying around our dear neighbours.
Love, SHaron
I finally turned the radio off and put on some classical music—the Victoria Requiem and the Monteverde 1610 Vespers, Bach’s complete organ music, Copeland’s Appalachian Spring—found that didn’t feel right, that I wanted something happier, and switched to Handel’s Water and Fireworks music, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Respighi’s Ancient Dances and Airs for Lutes (which is one of Dad’s favorites) and a couple of Hyperion’s samplers. That didn’t feel right either. Finally settled on shakuhachi flute, chanting monks, Philip Glass’s “Kundun.” and Peter Gabriel’s “Passion.” If I had more requiems I’d play those. Even this doesn’t seem right. Silence, somehow, seems more appropriate. I’m beginning to understand the remark, “It is barbarous to write a poem after Auschwitz.” Music seems wrong. Poems seem wrong.
I called Mel back today and got through on the first try. It seems to be easier to call out than call in. She says she keeps looking at Dave and saying, “I’m so glad you’re sitting there in that chair right now.” She also says that if she and Dave had moved to New Hampshire, as they’d been talking about and Mel balking at, Dave would probably have been flying the kinds of planes that took off from Logan and were hijacked (767s; he now flies F100s) and could easily have been the pilot or co-pilot. Mel says the gas stations in Oscoda kept jacking up the price every fifteen minutes as this was going on, and people were streaming into the stations with containers, including some guy with oil drums in the back of his pickup, until Gov. Engler got on the TV and told everyone it was the station owners and not the oil companies raising the price and that people who had gotten gouged should go back to the stations for a refund of the difference between the morning’s starting price and what they paid. One of the things that Giuliani said when this started was, “If you start raising prices, I’ll gouge your eyes out.” I think that got the message through. No one’s done it yet.
One of the last things Mel said to me before she hung up was “Make something beautiful from this. Make a poem.” I don’t know that I can. I was thinking about the other poems I’ve written about tragedies—“Universal Solvent.” about Pan Am 103, “Cthonic“ about the woman pushed in front of the subway train at 23rd Street; “Blue Door“ about Haiti, “Small Moon, Scudding Clouds“ about Nagasaki; “In the Marrow“ about the Challenger explosion—Christ, if I can make a poem about Nagasaki, why can’t I make one about this? Challenger was like this. I cried for days about it. But this, it seems to defy words. It defies music, it defies art. Like Auschwitz it is more than tragedy, but a vivid illustration of inhumanity, barbarism, bone-deep, supernatural Evil, like making prisoners dig their own graves, using civilian aircraft as air-to-ground missiles.
I intended to make focaccia today and never got around to it. Still glued, in shock, to the net and the radio.
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