Those martyrs, constant in their mission and their fervor,
Whose thorns were held at throats of innocents,
Bringing death to other innocents,
Whose cunning sacrifice turned the happy baggage of their chosen enemy
Into spears of terror and hatred,
Whose selfless evil struck a blow against oppressive liberty,
Whose artful treachery buffeted the tyranny of religious choice,
Whose stolen arrows arched into the marketplace
And pierced the profit seeking infidels,
Whose righteous fury laid low the towers of a great city,
Whose righteous fury laid low the towers,
Could not know, as self-intended martyrs often cannot know,
The awful emptiness of purpose and futility of deed.

Those martyrs could not know, as often self-intended martyrs don't,
The span between the enemy they saw and the enemy that was,
The gap between the dream from which they woke their enemy
And the dream which they provoked.

They could not know about our other towers.

They hoped that when their targets fell our hearts would crumble also.
They thought that fear, confusion and despair
Would leave us trembling in the wake of their apocalyptic triumph,
Lashing out blindly in our anger, provoking ruin.

They did not know about our other towers.

We had forgotten and misplaced some of those towers;
The ones where we had stored the dusty, distant, disinherited souls
Which formerly had encumbered the heroic icons of our nation (which we bring out for parades
And polish up to brandish when we wish to show how large and bright and free we are).
We had forgotten about those inconvenient nobilities of spirit
And stubborn democracies of movement, the rough-hewn tools
With which our heroes once had made a nation great.
But when the stricken city began to cry out in pain and fear
And the storied towers perilously shook and burned, and too much seemed lost
Citizens remembered where the truer towers were
And ran to where the need was greatest.
For heroes do not wait for burning rubble to come down on them
But go into the horror, bringing light and hope upon their backs.

They do not go with illusions or without fear.
They do not run from falling dreams.
They do not turn away from duty.
They do not go away or down to safety.

They go up.

Our heroes will always find those towers when the need is great;
We are a nation of tower builders, after all.
And our truest towers do not come down.
Our truest towers do not come down.

They go up.

Back to "In the Wake of the Fire" Index