Yesterday marked a quarter century since the 9-11 terrorist attacks. I still remember — I will always remember —walking the streets of Lower Manhattan through rows of faces in photographs pasted on lampposts and walls with urgent, wrenching words:
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“Have you seen my wife?” “Last seen, 8:20 AM, Tuesday.” “Have you seen our daughter?” “…our father?” “…my best friend?”
The question marks pierced into you like hooks.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, were attacks on America. But America is made up of the world.
The 2,977 people who were killed that day included people from more than 90 nations — Canada, India, Great Britain, South Korea, the Dominican Republic and more. That’s America.
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This week, I remembered a poem dedicated to the 43 members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union who came to work that morning at Windows on the World restaurant, atop the World Trade Center’s North Tower. None of them survived the tower’s collapse.
The poem is called , by Martín Espada. It reads, in part:
Twenty-five years later, we still shudder to think of that day, and pause to praise those we lost in that thunder.
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