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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2002 : Raphael Dagold
IN MANHATTAN, AFTER
Like Hiroshima's vague
silhouettes of stunned
bodies blinded, seared
photographically, negatives
hurled by heat and light
onto still walls of bank
buildings far enough the shock
of the blast, a sun's rumble,
left them standing in the other
shock, the light, the instant
of exposure x-rayed blindly
making flat surprised doubles
of suits, dresses, carefully
arranged hair; and like
the hollows left by ash,
hot, soft, poisonous
around the people of Pompeii,
after nineteen centuries filled
with plaster, making casts
of elbows, fingers, eyes
reaching from their absence
to tell us they were human—
in New York it is like this,
an afterimage across the street
from where the two towers stood,
this small stone church's
graveyard where Alexander Hamilton
is buried, carved markers
untouched, as if they'd breathed
in each body from the whole
skyward block forty feet
away, as if they could
do that, distilled versions,
sitting with upright shoulders
in dirt the same dirt
under all the buildings, under
sidewalks where people mill,
stand close, stroll, even, try
to understand, wearing
black baseball caps and winter
watchcaps with white letters
reading FDNY and GROUND ZERO,
they are looking up
into the middle distance,
trying to see what can't be
seen in bright sun of a Sunday,
their backs turned to the graveyard,
the light softer there, under
trees, an old light humming
on the grey stones,
they are taking pictures of the air,
as I am, of the absence,
taking pictures of people taking
pictures of the absence
of the buildings, the sun
behind a black, shrouded
office building casting
a shadow where no shadow
had fallen to ground for decades,
and I wish—like a child
sometimes hopes to be transported
to a different life, to flash
from one life to another
life—I wish that they,
on the 114th, the 79th, floors
had indeed traveled in the clear
sunlight down and become
the untouched weathered marks
of another century's hope
for remembrance, for voyage
into an uncluttered, a bright
future, no murk
of killing, jet fuel, red
revenge, distant lack
of honor or sense, caves
of hatred, desks of targets,
operational theatres of metal,
horses, money, and blood.
This poem was a finalist in the 2002 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Raphael Dagold
Raphael Dagold is a poet, photographer, teacher, and woodworker. He operates a custom cabinet and furniture shop. His poems have appeared in Quarterly West, Indiana Review, two girls review, Frank, Shirim, The Oregonian, Born (an online mixed-media magazine), and is forthcoming in Bridges. His two fables from Versions of Aesop, a book in progress, appeared in the spring/summer 2001 issue of Quarterly West, and two others appeared in the fall 2001 Washington Square.
Carbon, Mr. Dagold's book-length poetry manuscript, has twice been a finalist for the Anhinga Prize for Poetry. He has received fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts, the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, the Vermont Studio Center and other awards, including finalist for the Loft Literary Center's Speakeasy Prize and, most recently, Honorable Mention in the Judah L. Magnes Museum's 2000 Anna Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience.
Mr. Dagold teaches writing at Mt. Hood Community College in the Writers-in-the-Schools program of Literary Arts, Inc., and at Beth Israel Synagogue, and has taught and lectured at Portland State University and the University of Oregon. He won Honorable Mention in the 2000 Nagler Photography Competition held by the Judah Magnes Museum. Mr. Dagold's work can be viewed online at http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/tree_heart/.
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