The sky is not quite as brilliantly blue this morning as it was above New York City eleven years ago. But that familiar September chill is in the air, come to tuck in summer and welcome fall. “The innocent brightness of a new-born Day / Is lovely yet” wrote Wordsworth. And today yet is, though haunted by memory that won’t leave it alone, that tasks its innocence. Still, it’s getting to be a long time ago, that day. Nearly twenty-six million Americans who saw September 11, 2001 have left us, each died of some other thing. And more than thirty million children live among us who never saw those twin buildings scraping on the sky. To Wordsworth once more, for them:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.