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What Do We Tell the Children?

by Judith Viorst

If we can't promise
That it will never happen again,
Or that it won't, if it happens again,
Happen to them,
Or that if it does happen again,
And this time to them,
We will come save them,
Or that, if we can't save them,
Somebody else will,
Or that, if no one can save them,
It won't hurt,
Or it won't hurt that much,
Or it won't hurt that long,
Could we tell them
To please stop asking so many questions?

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Richard Perle:
Whose Fault Is He?

by Calvin Trillin, The Nation

Consider kids who bullied Richard Perle—
Those kids who said Perle threw just like agirl,
Those kids who poked poor Perle to show how soft
A mamma's boy could be, those kids who oft-
Times pushed poor Richard down and could be heard
Addressing him as Sissy, Wimp or Nerd.
Those kids have got a lot to answer for,
'Cause Richard Perle now wants to start a war.
The message his demeanor gets across:
He'll show those playground bullies who's the boss.
He still looks soft, but when he writes or talks
There is no tougher dude among the hawks.
And he's got planes and ships and tanks and guns—
All manned, of course, by other people's sons.

Some smells, sounds and sights from 9/11

By Bush Watcher

I held a wet handkerchief over my face when the D train passed through downtown.
The smoke hung thick and visible, people coughed in muted tones.
Like an electrical fire, mixed with old meat- it caused the eyes to tear.
Faces became stiff as the toxic rot slid uneasily onto stomachs.
The train clunked slowly through the reek - thunk, thunk... thunk thunk.
As solemnly measured as steps at a funeral.

Tires moaned against a cement curb as a car pulled up next to a payphone. The driver jumped out and frantically began dialing.
A doorman was screaming in the street “Godzilla is coming, Godzilla is coming!”
Outside of the school a girl cried, “my father works on the ninety second floor. Was it that high up?”
In the corner deli a fire chief joked that now the FDNY would have to cross out the towers on their badges.
Bent under plastic bags, an old woman asked a cop on Atlantic, “What happened?”
A pure New York accent answered, “Where da fuck you been lady?”

The sun set blood red, faded to brown, then black.
I stood with my brother on the Brooklyn promenade and looked out over dark Manhattan. In that light everyone looked the same: yellow-gray and old.
The bridges and tunnels were lit up as SUVs crawled their way back to suburban homes.
On the night of 9/11 there were no lights over downtown and the stars came out cool and white- Vega, Altair, Deneb.
Emergency lights flashed blue and red through the smoke billows.
The city held its breath, waiting for a rescue that never happened.

That night the Hudson was impossibly wide.

- Brooklyn, 9/06/02

The Names

By Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A fine rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name —
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner —
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds —
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in green rows in a field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

Billy Collins is poet laureate of the United States. This poem was read on Sept. 5, 2002 before Congress at its joint session in New York City. fromNew York Times, Sept. 6, 2002

Fear