Remembering

I don't especially want to add words to the individual and collective remembering we're doing today. But I'm going to offer up two poems that are part of my remembrance of this day each year. The first one came to me in the fall of 2001 when the trees turned.

~ Autumn 2001

 I wasn’t ready

for anything else to die

so autumn’s arrival

seemed insensitive.

It did not even dress

mournfully

but threw on flaunting fabrics

of stage-light yellow,

siren red (shameless),

sunset extravaganza orange.

In spite of nature’s impropriety

I found myself

making excuses to get in the car,

taking the highway like a long drink.

Hillsides thick with oak and maple were

enormous mounds of mums—

bright, breathing bouquets

that knew an African proverb:

When Death comes to find you,

may it find you alive.

The second poem is about a different September 11. We were living in Santiago, Chile, in the 1990s while my husband went to graduate school. The year we were there was the last year Chile observed September 11 as a national holiday, marking the day in 1973 when a military coup overthrew elected president Salvador Allende and put in his place Augusto Pinochet as dictator. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of Chileans were arrested and tortured, including over 3000 people who were killed for political reasons. Most of those who were killed were never seen again. They became known as the Desaparecidos--the Disappeared.

When we were there, Chile had been functioning as a democracy again for several years, but there was still a lot of fear and wariness. On my way to work one day I saw some office workers peacefully protesting outside their building, wearing their matching blazers, slacks, skirts, pantyhose, heels. And I watched the military police break up the protest with water canons. On September 11, in one part of Santiago, they held a military parade to honor Pinochet, and in another part there was a march for the Disappeared. Here is a poem I wrote last year, reflecting back on that day.

~ 11 de Septiembre

No one had to tell us to run.
Animal instinct crouched
at the base of our skulls,
waiting for a scent in the air
to warn us it was time.

Our march through the streets of Santiago
had funneled us into a wooded cemetery,
crowded us into a basin of earth
to hear words of remembrance,
words of disappearance.
Elsewhere in the city, this nascent democracy
was throwing a parade for Pinochet,
its dictator emeritus,
immunity tucked like a carnation
in his breast pocket.
We were newlyweds living abroad,
looking for something to do
on a quiet day off.

A taxi took us through the silent city
to the gathering downtown.
The faces around us were so
ordinary,
people holding pictures
of sons, sisters, fathers
never seen again—
no body for burial,
no evidence for trial,
no apology.

The woman with the soft silver hair
and the bearded Viking of a man
who greeted her with kisses
 (left cheek, right cheek)
walked ahead of us,
his long legs keeping pace
with her worn sandals.
They were not surprised
that young anarchists tagged along,
bandanas masking them
from Big Brother cameras in the street.
They were not troubled
by riot police at the cemetery’s gate—
a tight human wall of shields and adrenaline.
They were not alarmed
by troops holding a strategic position
on a hill overlooking the podium.
They knew how this scene would end
but their pace did not waver.
We followed them deeper into the crowd
until our feet stopped moving.
We could not go where they were going.

One speaker followed another
saying poignant, valiant things, I’m sure,
but my ears were hearing the clash
of rocks on plexiglass.
People held their ground
but an edginess was breaking up our focus,
turning us from a collective conscience
into restless individuals,
weight shifting, eyes scanning.
Gone was my college education,
my preference for strained orange juice,
my “right way” to load a dishwasher.
Gone was the evolution of our species.
Fight or flight flooded my muscles,
my senses wildly awake.
We heard a thunk
thunk, thunk
and yellow smoke filtered into the crowd.
Stampede.
There was only the searing of my eyes, nose, throat
and the running, running, running
through trees and tombs.
We passed empty tear gas canisters,
an injured anarchist, mausoleums and monuments.
Our faces were faucets, flushing the poison,
seeing little but the runners ahead of us.
We were stumbling, climbing over stone walls,
breathing through the crooks of our arms.
Where were we going?!
Was there any way out?!
This wasn’t our cause to die for!

And then, suddenly, the street.
Sunlight, fresh air, a man walking a dog.
Half a block later,
we boarded a bus going anywhere,
found seats near a round woman
knitting a wool sweater.
It was over.

We wanted nothing
but to go home
to our tiny apartment,
maybe call our parents just to hear their voices,
maybe start a family that very afternoon.