Fingers point out the towers’ new terror,
those trapped above who scream
into the harsh North wind,
the Navajo North wind,
whence evil visits
under a darkened wing.
Their words long blown apart, I am left to try
to translate the wild gesticulating
from the small-eyed windows
at the tower’s top. They seem
a gallery of Munch screamers.
The wild flinging arms are accompanied
by voice, but the yelled imprecations
do not reach down to me, down to
trusted earth that they so long to touch,
the firm earth that so many desperate ones
find in a final fatal flight. Their voices
do not arrive but their written notes
safely flutter down like flakes
in a snowstorm, gently lighting
in my hair, in my bag, on the ground.
They are scraps of business,
once notes of commerce written and passed
to accomplish important work, now as useless
as dandruff dusting down.
Notes from power to power
as silent and impotent as the unheard pleas above
in the hot breath of the wounded beast.
Again I try to hear them
as they loose their screams
with smoke pouring out from their backs.
I try to translate the gestures from these
towers of Babel, try to understand
the symbolic pleadings that are a Rosetta stone:
“Help me! Please help!”
In babbling silence they speak to me:
“Tell my son I love him!”
“Tell my wife I miss her!”
“Tell my dear ones…”