9-11-01 (Translation) . Poem by Michael Walker

Not on Poem Hunter, I read the English poem in 'The Oxford Book of American Poetry', edited by David Lehman with John Brehm. (I did not translate 'person', which is used three times, as the gender in French is feminine) .
'9-11-01' is a topical poem, although the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon happened sixteen years ago almost to the day. Because the poem is dated 2001, it would have been written in the weeks following the attacks, when memories were fresh and passions were strong; but it is a very controlled poem. It conceals more than it states. My first thoughts are with the almost-3000 victims of September 11,2001.
This is an obscure but emotional poem, on which I had to do some research. There were nineteen hijackers altogether-trained by Al-Qaeda- and Howe looks at three of the leading ones. The first man is a risk-taking existentialist, 'trash in the groin of the sand dunes', of a Middle Eastern country-litter in the sands. That is what it implies he is worth. The first man is doing flight training over Death Valley, California, which he now sees the same as the desert of Pavan in the Middle East, where he came from. He may be Mohamed Atta, Egyptian, who flew into the North Tower. Exact identity does not really matter.
The second man is the favourite of Osama-Bin-Laden. Bin-Laden planned the attacks but has since been killed by American security forces of course. The second man feels like a winner 'taking the hit', flying over Utah in training, like war-planes flying out of Miramar in south-east Mexico, then right over New York, about to crash into one of the Towers and taking cocaine ('coke') just before impact.He thinks again of Mexico with its 'deep beige couplets'-its varied landscape of savanna by the west coast, valleys, with mountains in the north. He could be Marwan al-Shehi, who flew into the South Tower and he was from the U.A.R. The fourth pilot was Hani Hanjour, from Saudi Arabia, who flew into the Pentagon, and he too has qualities of 'The second person...the beloved'.
'9-11-O1' is also a very geographical poem and I had to look up the atlas or Google frequently.
The poem gains by the repetition of 'Like' at the start of nineteen sentences or phrases.
It is 'like call us all It, /Thou It'. The nineteen hijackers are all 'It'. That is why I say that exact identities are not what the poem is about-' call us all It'.
In a notable anti-climax phrase, the last line is simply, 'The third person is a materialist'. One leading pilot, Ziad Jarrah, was from a wealthy family in Lebanon. Jarrah was the one most likely to cause 'a split cult', as he was thinking of leaving the plot weeks before: he was engaged to be married.
Fanny Howe's poem may be obscure but it touches the heart. Only a poet living in modern times could have written this.
I read a few times a few years ago' The New York Times. The Collected Portraits of Grief'. These short essays concentrated on life rather than death, what the victims had done in the past and just before boarding the flights, or walking in to start work in the buildings. Every portrait is different. One brother of a victim said: 'The media calls it a tragedy, but was mass murder'.