Wind Time back. Rewind Time.
Make the struck towers rise from dust,
reconstruct themselves:
glass, concrete, girders, walls,
a huge jigsaw
interlocked,
complete again.
Lights come on, phones chirp like crickets.
In reconstructed work-stations,
fingers dance on keyboards again;
vending machines cough
then spew out pungent brew;
air-con sighs then resumes;
elevators ascend, descend;
video conferences resume mid-
sentence, emails beep,
digital clocks flicker
like quick, green lizards.
Wind Time back. Rewind Time.
Time restarts
as though it had never ended.
Hopes, innocence, daydreams, boredom:
all the mundane certainties of ordinary lives
are reaffirmed.
Shoes, handbags, mobile phones, flesh,
warped by intense heat:
these un-melt, re-form,
resume their former shapes.
The terrible, unearthly screams
subside.
Wind Time back. Rewind Time.
Backwards
the soft clouds drift;
birds fly in reverse.
Those grim death-planes,
stiletto-silver in the morning sun,
withdraw, like daggers, from the shattered towers,
whose twin glass skins, pristine again,
shimmer
like smooth, un-rippled water.
Richard Fleming
