American poet Galway Kinnell (1927-2014), Pulitzer Prize and Frost Medal recipient, wrote many poems in his six-decade career, from haunting dreamlike sequences like the 13-line "Promissory Note" to sweeping epics like "The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World." One of his poems in particular, "When the Towers Fell," about the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, contains two haunting lines in the first stanza that still strike me to the core of my soul. Describing the Twin Towers, the poet writes we:
grew so used to them often we didn't see them, and now, notseeing them, we see them.
I passed through the former World Trade Center hundreds of times as a student, employee, or business owner during its brief 28-year history. While I remained awestruck by its underground network of shops, restaurants, theaters, subways, and commuter trains, I was never impressed by its exterior design. Thus, I looked only at its shadow as I walked past it. But after it fell, I wanted it back. I wanted to see it. I don't want the Freedom Tower. I want back what I cannot have. It is not there, yet I still see it. I sometimes feel that I still have not moved past the anger or depression stages of grief. Kinnell's two lines speak for how I live with this loss.
I am grateful that The New Yorker makes "When the Towers Fell" available on its website.
