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Monday, September 5, 2011

Dan Schneider on W.H. Auden, 9/11, & The World Trade Center

Dan Schneider on W.H. Auden, 9/11, & The World Trade Center
Excerpt:
he Twin Towers Canon
(1)

SOUTH TOWER
Cured of humanity, the taller World Trade Center
despises its creators, growing ever more dull
in their reach for the sun, to cast upon it, its Light,
which reveals, to its makers, a vision to benight
even the wonder of children, drawn to the taller
aspects of aspiration, those laid low by design
or at least gray proficiency. This is a sure sign
that what uses once modern merely fades to the center
which thrives on uniqueness. So, this tower is taller
than the north one? Both of them are incredibly dull
in the afternoon. Has either, once, lit up the night
like the Empire State? Has it ever given light
to a young boy's design? When it is cast in this light
no lecture on the intricacies of its design
can rescue its reputation, which sinks as the night
whispers its way westward, out from behind the Center
which slowly grows lightward, from within. The day grows dull
as the tower is left to its dreams. It is taller
than its dreams. It is real. Reality is taller
than dream. So what if it is uglier in daylight
than Yamasaki's vision? No vision is as dull
as that made to become part of another's design,
or another’s fraction of dream, part of a center
that cannot be comprehended. Much like this coy night
Mankind hopes vaguely, yet dreads precisely. In the night
all our dreams are leveled, only fear grows taller,
like a goodbye a loved one cannot voice. The center
sinks into its own peace, the low dudgeon of twilight,
which ramifies its structure, as if by some design
of a god of the inanimate, or something dull
as the joys of big boys with their toys, or even dull
as knowing the ultimate artificer of night
is poetry- itself an artifice, a design
of the anima that propels life through dream, taller
than a child's, which are ever fading, as the light
gives its last, a burst of orange, over the Center
receding. It stands, a dull icon, in the taller
canyons of cumulus clouds, which design the last light,
outside the night's tower, disavowed of its center.
(2)

NORTH TOWER
We have lost ourselves to marvel, much as the skyline
has lost its appeal to those beings below, smaller
than the circle of night. Yet, entranced by its starlight
they look ever upward, as I do to you, this night,
as my eyes fill with a grandeur, an unequal pull,
greater than these engineered Twin Towers. I enter
this ardor that you inspire. And, as I enter
my being- within I construct our own skyline,
of transnebulous beauties, which can only lend pull
to your presence. In this night only I grow smaller
as your hair shadows the tower, the wind, making night
sheer illusion, when its fluid is cast with the light,
of Manhattan at night, all my depths become that light
of love, a parabola that will arc and enter
the dream of a boy floating wary above the night,
which stood out starkly, a kind of immortal skyline,
against eternity's blackness, never made smaller
than the dream of love. Nothing is real. Nothing can pull
as eternity, save you beauty, which I feel pull
in my silence, full as the unblinking summer light

which faded with the hours. It never grows smaller
for your eyes are oxygen, your glance what can enter,
and power this dance that ignites beyond the skyline
where a scared star leaves its place in the immortal night,
and rinses your eyes of their doubt. You see me, this night,
for the first time, on this skyscraper. You feel the pull
as I touch you with my words and fingers. The skyline
recedes, as if a memory lost to the sharp light
of the now, where something other than love can enter
this joy which increases, and can never grow smaller,
like the future, itself, which can never grow smaller,
the murmurs of tomorrow, which gets us through this night,
nothing but a part of our love, which can enter,
and recede, with your kiss. You are that hope, which I pull
on in the breeze of adventure, which dares to alight,
on your being, as your eyes disavow the skyline,
as the east meets morning. The skyline would grow smaller,
without you, if our love were to pull, as the night,
what kind of love could it light? Or a new love enter?
Requiescat in pace [1972-2001]!
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

  A bit more alliteration & assonance lift the music, & we’ve come almost all the way back to the ‘real world’ after a 2 stanza aery. There is a reference to a famous WW1 quote by a British diplomat, Edward Grey, on 8/3/14, which stated ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our life time.’...
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