For My Fallen Countrymen
by William Elliott Hazelgrove
You who only
wanted to work and have children and have life have passed. You have been thrust into
a darkness we can only imagine. For in a blink of any eye life
was snatched from you and now you are below the steel and the
concrete of our fallen symbol. You are the people of us all.
You 
are the butcher and the banker
and the fireman and the mother. You have all gone into the smoky
darkness of our billowing sorrow.
What can we say to those images on our screens. My God. My
God. My father my mother my brother my son my daughter. You are
all gone in that crumbling moment when the skyscrapers fell from
the sky. We sit in disbelief in our quiet homes rent asunder
by the evil. We grab our children and our wives and our husbands
and huddle in basements and watch while you are in your tomb
of concrete and steel. We watch and wonder if our buildings will
fall for us now.
For the world has changed has it not? We have lost our innocence
again and our children no more. You have done this for us by
your sacrifice. We have the luxury of caution and the weary eye.
But you have no more luxuries. You died with a coffee cup, a
brief case, a handshake. You wrote, laughed, and worried. You
thought of the day the year, the century. You were us. A beautiful
day yawned outside until that
screaming darkness slammed into your window. Then you fell and
we watched.
So I have no more words. They are precious few now. Only a
poet can utter the desolation and sorrow and I must invoke one..
So stop all the clocks…silence the pianos. The stars
are not wanted now; put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle
the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For now nothing
can come to any good. Sleep tight my friends. Sleep tight. My
fallen countrymen.
