9/11/11

The water pours into the inscribed basin, Niagara-like,
Mingled with the tears of all who died and all who remain.
The other dead flow with it.
We cannot but remember them
As I remember you,
Although you died in winter
And not on a late-summer day
That everyone says was seamless
Save, of course, for that terrible moment that rent the sky.
They sing a song that was your lullaby
And read a poem you always loved.
I weep, then, for them and you,
For “No day can erase you from the memory of time.”
That is what they inscribed on the memorial – Virgil.
The Greco-Romans always understood suffering and death.
They knew there was no refuge from pain.
Like the young man at the nursing-home desk, 
Blond and beautiful.
“It is a lovely day,” he says.
And yet, he seems to add.
And yet.
Upstairs, the aides wear their pastels,
“Trying to hold on to summer,” one says with a rueful smile.
I glide through the halls pretending not to notice the dead and the dying.
The living can have no truck with them – at least not for long.
And so at last
I leave through parting doors,
Still haunted, though, by loss
Amid the leafy mystery of a summer night.