Generation Gap

Trucks and barges brought the wreckage
For the agents’ catalogue:
Stuffed dolls from the gift shop,

Rodin bronze,

Number plates from elevators, 

Human flesh and bone, 

Seatbelt fragments from the planes, 

A firefighter’s boots. 

They filled a bucket full of credit cards 

And out in rows they laid the badges. 

By some unspoken process we discovered 

When it was okay to show 

The destruction of a city in a film 

Or set the date for a used car sale. 

Bureaucrats mismanaged memory. 

In time a generation rose 

To whom those images 

Could only be history. 

The process of separation 

Is continuous. 

Only now and then 

Come nauseous moments 

When the ground splits apart 

Beneath our feet, 

And we find ourselves 

On a broken ice floe drifting, 

Forlorn forever 

From the world we knew.