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Nine Eleven
Shawn Thornburg

There is among the everyday heroes
Of fire a tale of superstition told:
If silence rings throughout the engine house,
And eventlessness, though welcome, grows old,
And dust settles into outfits' boots' toes,
Then ready your guts and expectations:
The bygone days of infernos to douse
Will soon be no more for 'maginations;
The greatest Phoenix yet is soon to rise.

O naturally benign captured birds,
Why have you flown low above our heads,
And lodged yourselves in the towering rooms
Of commerce where trading business-man treads,
And carried the men of terror--whom words
Could not deter from their holy mission--
And Hearsed your riders into early tombs,
And let the Phoenix of superstition,
Manifest in you, strike down from the skies
At the unprepared siblings tall in size,
And forced on them their suffering demise?

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