1.
More than a million tons of rubble
from the World Trade Center towers,
and an estimated ten thousand body
parts—what wasn’t reduced to smoke
or vaporized. “Vaporized.” It takes
more than a moment for that one
to sink in, because it means only this,
that we are breathing the dead, the dead
who lingered in Manhattan and are now
dispersed upon the eight winds, becoming
a breeze in Kandahar, a gust in Qala-i-Jangi,
the stuff through which mortar fragments
fragment the fragile bodies of the Taliban,
of al-Qaeda warriors trumpeting bin Laden,
holed up in Tora Bora’s honeycomb caves.
2.
I wonder what stranger, what potential
friend has entered my nostrils here
in Colorado, and if she’s why I’ve been
sneezing, why my eyes are dry
and burning, my throat raw,
the mucus thick and welling
well inside my head. I’m not fond
of Magritte, but I can’t stop myself
from seeing Golconde, a human rain.
Accursed for our worshippings,
damned for our devotions, gutted
by the very God whose blood we drink.
3.
Today, George Harrison’s ashes
will be given to the Ganges. Give me
love, give me love, give me peace on Earth.
May he find his way to the salt; may
the water that holds him evaporate;
may he, too, become our breathing.