Grief- The Names by Billy Collins

The Names by Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name-

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on a storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I tirn a corner-

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigly in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updrift among buildings.

Names silent in stone.

Or cried out behing a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening-weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

 And the names are outlined on the rose clouds-

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfounf)

Then young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled in the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.

Names on the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of a tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

I feel grief when I read this poem, the grief of a nation and the personal grief of the people who lost someone on September 11, 2001.  The beginning of this poem talks of a soft rain, like the tears came a year later when this poem was written. These tears were not as frantic and terrifying as the year before. These tears were softer and slower but no less painful as the writer gives names to the people and the realization that these were not  just“victims” of a terrorist attack. These were people who were part of a life they left behind.  Mothers and fathers and children go on in their own separate spaces feeling a heartache that will never end.  The names will haunt the places where they lived their lives and where their lives ended.  The beauty returning as the The World Trade Center disaster has been cleaned away from our sight, we still see them as we look around a world that will never be the same.