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SOUTH OF CANAL STREET: The New Earth
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, precious Lord
-
Thomas A. Dorsey
Several days after the tragic events of September 11th, I was
contacted by the BBC to talk about poetry and how it might play a
role in helping Americans come to grips with their emotions. The reading as well as the writing of poetry can help people
suffering from grief and loss. Art has a healing capacity and can touch the human spirit in such a way that hope in life is
renewed.
As a writer whose beginnings are rooted in the Black Arts
Movement, I view poetry as having a social function.
Many popular African American artists of the sixties and early
seventies saw their work changing the consciousness of people
within their community. Art was considered to have a magical
quality and could assist in liberation from physical as well as
spiritual bondage.
I thought about these ideas during the radio interview. I also
reflected on how tired I had become since the destruction at the
World Trade Center and Pentagon. When I first learned about the
horrible events I was on my way to a reading in Western
Pennsylvania. My friend and fellow writer Dinty Moore wanted me
to teach two classes and read from my memoir Fathering Words: TheMaking of An African American Writer. When we stopped for lunch
at a local restaurant, the waitress came to our table, and in
what I detected to be an out of place Brooklyn accent, said the
towers of the Trade Center were gone.
I couldn't image what she was saying was true. I thought it had
to be an exaggeration. Dinty and I quickly ate our lunch and
rushed to his office. There for the first time we both looked at
the television footage of the horror. We were writers, both at a
loss for words.
I borrowed Dinty's cell phone and called my mother who lives in Tribeca, a few blocks from the Trade Center. She was well, and
amazingly calm. At 82 perhaps she had seen enough or maybe she
didn't want to see anymore. I would soon realize that I was
fortunate to reach my mother; telephone contact would soon be
lost for a few days. During times of crisis and terror, stress
runs alongside a person catching its breath.
As a writer you immediately think about writing, placing things
down on paper, capturing the experience. Friends of mine during
the days that followed the 11th, emailed poems by writers such
as Dylan Thomas, W.H.Auden, and Thich Nhat Hanh. However the
memorable one I received was untitled and written by Suheir Hammad. Last year Suheir and I met near the PATH train station at
the Trade Center. She had moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey and I
was visiting my mother for a few days, and so we decided to just
hangout. Suheir is the author of Born Palestinian, Born Black.
Her new poem was like film pulling me back to the bombing. Her
words were a combination of fire and ice. The poem twisting
itself into braided personal and political images. It cried for
her sister, and brother, while echoing in the empty throats of
survivors and the families of victims. Beneath the rumble,
beneath the blues, a hurt so deep:
there have been no words
i have not written one word.
no poetry in the ashes south of canal street.
My mother lives south of Canal Street and her neighborhood was marked as the "frozen zone." A description which sounds like
science fiction until you realize the landscape of New York has
been changed forever and one could be looking at Mars wondering
if there is still life where the signs of those canals once were.
A couple of nights I went to bed thinking about my mother and the
rest of the world. In the media folks were talking about life
never being the same and one scholar talked about the "new
normal." I thought of my mother laughing at this term, for she
had told me she never felt safe in the neighborhood after the
first attack on the towers a few years ago. How had she lived all
these years? What survival wisdom did she possess? My mother's
hair is gray, the color of the endless smoke which seems to still
rise from ground zero.
I called her yesterday and asked how she was doing. She told me
she was going outside for a walk. She sounded calm and normal. I
wondered how she felt when she walked outside and turned the
corner; her eyes looking upward at the sky. Her faith in God as
strong as ever. A few blocks away the towers of man reduced to
nothing; an entire civilization waiting for poets to step forth
and describe the new earth.
E. Ethelbert Miller
9/29/01
