In the late 1940′s Thomas Merton published his complicated poem Figures For An Apocalypse. One of the sections of the poem is entitled “In the Ruins of New York“.
While the whole section concerns a great downfall, a city and way of life overturned in materialism, there are some striking lines which – when isolated – call to mind the horror of 11 September 2001.
Oh how quiet it is after the black night
When flames out of the clouds burned down your cariated teeth,
And when those lightnings,
Lancing the black boils of Harlem and the Bronx,
Spilled the remaining prisoners,
(The tens and twenties of the living)
Into the trees of Jersey,
To the green farms, to find their liberty.How are they down, how have they fallen down
Those great strong towers of ice and steel,
And melted by what terror and what miracle?
What fires and lights tore down,
With the white anger of their sudden accusation,
Those towers of silver and of steel?
From Figures For An Apocalypse, VI – In the Ruins of New York (1947) by Thomas Merton
I have posted this excerpt on 9/11 over the past few years, since about 2005 when I first inserted it into a column for The Wanderer. Inevitably someone protests that Merton wasn’t saying this or that, blah blah blah. Yes, critics, we all know that. Take your meds and breathe calmly. Merton was not a “prophet”, anticipating an act of terror. 9/11 was not an apocalypse except perhaps for those who went to their Judge that day. Islamist terrorists were not executing the just judgments of God on the United States. They were agents of Satan. The content of poem does not line up perfectly with the events ten years ago today. But the imagery of the poem is, for me, evocative.
When I pass through the words of this poem, I cannot help but recall watching the collapse of “those great strong towers of ice and steel”. And vice versa. When I see the video of the WTC collapsing, this poem comes to my mind.
The whole poem, even just the section of “In the Ruins of New York” is worth your time. Merton paints the ugly with beautiful images. Other moments of his poem are now striking, given the global economic downturn and hard days we will be facing because of imprudence and greed. Consider this:
“This was a city
That dressed herself in paper money.
She lived four hundred years
With nickels running in her veins.
She loved the waters of the seven purple seas,
And burned on her own green harbor
Higher and whiter than ever any Tyre.
She was as callous as a taxi;
Her high-heeled eyes were sometimes blue as gin,
And she nailed them, all the days of her life,
Through the hearts of her six million poor.
Now she has died in the terrors of a sudden contemplation
- Drowned in the waters of her own, her poisoned well.”
…
But now the moon is paler than a statue.
She reaches out and hangs her lamp
In the iron trees of this destroyed Hesperides.
And by that light, under the caves that once were banks and theaters,
The hairy ones come out to play….
The hairy ones come out to play…
Think of riots in Greece as their economy falls to pieces. Think of London and other cities in the UK. Cities in the USA as well. Think of your neighborhood.
Sts. Nunilo and Alodia, pray for us.