A Monument to Something
When all the political smoke-and-mirrors veils
And all the superfluous echoes
Of patriotic rhetoric, bombastic metaphors, symbolic iconography,
And bathetic elegies for the dead (who refuse to stay dead)
Have dissipated into New York City's particulated skies,
What's left will be a new concrete-steel-and-glass edifice,
A monument to something (a nation's resilience?
Its chauvinism? perseverance? optimism? sentimentality?),
A name attached (permanently? provisionally?) to a monolith
Rising from the ashes of a nihilistic catastrophe,
Proclaiming "Freedom Tower," "One World Trade Center,"
"Pataki's Folly," "Spitzer's White Elephant," "Paterson's Bull's-Eye" —
An obelisk, a cenotaph commemorating reincarnation,
A mausoleum not quite on the order of Cheops' and Ramses',
As timeless as today, if not tomorrow, let alone forever.
05/11/09 - (1)
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