Journeys of the Questress - WTC
Literary Reflections
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The Way it Was - 1
The Way it Was - 2
Sept 19 - When Tomorrow Never Comes
Sept 27 - Oral Interpretation
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 1
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 2
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 3
Oct 11 - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Oct 28 - Each Day I Search the Rubble
Nov 12 - When Spires Fall
Nov 19 - 911 The Rape of America
Dec 14 - Just A Thought
Dec 18 - A Sense of Place
Feb 2 - Final Pass to the End Zone
March 3 - Sitting on the Edge
March 14- Do You Still Remember
March 20 - Virtual Walk-Through
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 1
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 2
April 1 - Towers of Light
May 14 - View From Above
May 30 - Tunnel At the End of the Light
May 31 - Seventeen Hundred
Aug 9 - From the Margins Erased
Aug 30 - The Train Doesn't Stop There Anymore
Sept 9 - Ceremonies of Light and Dark
Sept 10 - Just An Anniversary
Sept 12 - September Holds Great Promise
Literary Reflections
Rebirth and Resurrection
The Winter Garden Springs To Life
The Winter Garden Springs To Life - con't
Underpass to the Past
Rebuilding Ground Zero
Under Hallowed Ground
Borders
Yahrzeit
What Will Fill the Void?
I Submit a Design
Footprints in the Dust
My Memorial Design Submission
My Memorial Design - Drawings
New Path Train Station
Path Station Tour
May We Never Forget
That Which Surives
War Without End
4th Anniversary
Footprints in the Dust
Void
I Miss 9/11
Time Comes Between Us
A Thousand Cranes
Fear Factor
Love Letters On The Wall
Empty Chairs
Sitting on the Edge of Forever
Walking the Perimeter of Emptiness
A Counting of Days
For Friends Absent But Not Forgotten
Stigmata
The Memory Keeper's Promise
Unbreak My Heart
Standing On The Edge Of Forever
Both Sides Now
A Memory In Time
The Gravity of Loss
The Survivors Rise Up
Flowers Will Bloom
The Fire Within Us
The Sentinel
Stronger Than The Storm
Between the Candle and the Stars
Ghosts
A Journey Through Remembrance
Canticle of Remembrance
Beyond the Crucible of Chaos
Journey Through Remembrance project
What See We Now
Forever In Our Hearts
Keeping the Flame Alive
The Rebuilding of Ground Zero continues
Does Anyone Care Anymore?
Where Is Our Story Teller of Pain
At Memory's Edge
Dust Thou Art and to Dust Thou Shalt Return
7x7x70
Heroes Never Die
The Flame Inside Our Hearts
The Year of the Heroes of 9/11
Déjà Vu
Remembering 9/11 in the year of COVID-19
Coronavirus Decimates Ailing Sept. 11 Responders
Touching From a Distance
That Which Survives 20 years later
2021 - 20 years later
Memories of Terror Return
Putin's Name Covered Over On Teardrop Memorial
The 9/11 Tribute Museum Closes
When Memories Fade Away
St. Nicholas at Ground Z is rebuilt
The Blue Wall of the Unidentified Victims
When Time Calls Your Name
When Art Gets It All Wrong
9/11 victims that America wants to forget
Sing a Song of Remembrance
Words of Remembrance

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In my readings, I have come across 3 poems:  The Destruction of Cathedrals, by Daisy Aldan, Sonnet 64 by William Shakespeare, and the The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats that eerily reflect upon conditions that resonate to the September 11 WTC destruction and could easily have been written just days after 9/11. However, Daisy Aldan's 'Destruction of Cathedrals' was written shortly after WW2 and thus reflects upon that time of destruction. Shakespeare lived in an early time where wars and skirmishes were always close at hand and thus his 'Sonnet 64' echoes the sentiments of the threat of loss hovering to come and claim ones love. Yeats' 'The Second Coming' paints a modern picture of our disjointed world waiting to fulfill a biblical apocalypse.
 
We might feel that we are going through a unique time in our history. That our experience is like no other. Yet we are part of the human condition and part of its unending parade of wars. These three literary works show us that at the heart of all disasters, the human emotions rise up the same, no matter what time or place.

The  Destruction of Cathedrals  - Daisy Aldan

For there, like France at war, I found myself,

Not standing forth in pride and glory, but on my knees in mourning, amid ruins.

Amid the noise of falling glass and plaster.

Statues, pinnacles, bell turrets, counterforts; crockets, birds, pillars and arches,

All all in ruins incalcinated.

Cross, candlesticks, reliquaries, masonry, swept away like wisps of straw.

The smiling angel has only half a face,

The Chimera which climbs t meet her has been struck by a bullet in her back,

The hands of the caryatid, amputated,

Solomons cloak is cracked the Queen of Sheba has lost her robe and crown.

The flames have scaled the steeples spread over the roofs

O vos omnes qui transites perviam, attendete et vedete

 Everywhere they are licking the lead plates

Disclosing the bare frame forest across interlacing balconies

Like a prodigious skeleton of fire

Leaving an immense void twisted iron, indented clock wheels, broken muted bells,

Foolish imposter doors which did not open

Hang in high galleries. Perforated the great roses intense blues, purples,

Reds so warm and vigorous which burnished

The rays of the midday sun. The gargoyles drip heavy tears. I hear the bells falling.

Wind is raging among the naves and corpses.

Sonnet 64 - William Shakespeare

When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,
When sometime lofty towers I see down razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage,
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

The Second Coming - William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
 
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?