3. How Many They Died


One hundred thirty thousand faces look at each other in death
bloated; peaceful.

The mantle surges for them.
They smile excess rictus.
The animals too are ripe.

Imagine the World Trade Center falling
forty-six times packed with financial advisors and secretaries--
the weeks this would take, loading the long files
of those to die, lines snaking throughout Manhattan
going to dust--covered in it.
How many firemen would it require?

To rush into that tower and pulverize--
gray flakes of hero driven-through, wiped off
windshields, remorselessly falling
forty-six times the twenty-eight hundred onto helmets
and visors and getting into eyes,
forty-six times the twenty-eight hundred darkening the sun
reflecting at night the city in them orange,
forty-six times the twenty-eight hundred descending
with concrete, plaster, hundreds
and hundreds of memos apiece, internal documents--
This is how many they died thrown against trees

tangled in collapsing houses batted running drowned
concussed eaten by birds hissing--clean
into the mouths.

In their eyes endless reflections--

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