SIXTEEN YEARS AGO YESTERDAY

Meditation on a Tragic Anniversary

A radiant cloudless morning

air fresh and clear

sky the brightest blue

mood mellow

A lovely young day bright with promise ––

And then a gleaming silver shell appeared

mirroring beautifully the morning sunshine 

A Thing of Beauty –– but horribly out of place

like a spacecraft from an alien planet

Dipping crazily far too low upon the skyline

before anyone could feel the menace ––

it smashed directly into a gigantic upright construct ––

one of a pair ––

Twin monuments to Greed and Vain Ambition some were quick to say

But sudden violent death eradicated an entire investment firm

in one horrific instant –– 

dozens of bright young lives incinerated –– gone!

Before dazed onlookers could begin to understand what was happening

another silver shell acting as a missile 

crashed into the second of the giant pair.

Ugly buildings!  A hideous blot 

on the once-graceful Manhattan skyline.

“Ada Louise Huxtable might secretly rejoice at this,”

part of me thought wickedly, for I had always resented

the overbearing, outsized twins ––

Bounders! Interlopers ! Invaders!

But before that ruined day was halfway through

three-thousand innocents had been

burned alive, brains and eyeballs boiled 

skulls pulverized, skeletons crushed

between twisting, white hot girders

pelted with falling rubble midst the flames

caught, crippled, crumpled, smashed to bits ––

Smothered in collapsing stairwells and buried alive

in a torrent of red hot cinders and debris

In so many ways the scene must have mimicked the final hours

of the residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum

And then there were those hideous echoes 

of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire ––

Where so many jumped to their deaths

to escape being burned alive ––

In an instant smashed skulls, broken bones and bloody pulp 

were all that remained of their vibrant young lives.

And not so long ago in Benghazi –– to mark the anniversary 

of this Great Triumph of Barbarity over Civilization

our young, handsome, well-meaning, 

hopelessly naive, ambassador to Libya

was surrounded in his quarters, 

dragged out into the streets

beaten, sodomized and brutally murdered.

But what does any of this matter? What difference does it make?

Let’s just forget about it, and MOVE ON.

Might as well. 

We are privileged to live in interesting times.

Kyrie eleison!

Kyrie eleison!

Christe eleison!

~ FreeThinke