We adore images, we like the spectacle
Of speed and size, the working of prodigious
Systems. So on television we watched.

The terrible spectacle, repetitiously gazing
Until we were sick not only of the sight
Of our prodigious systems turned against us

But of the very systems of our watching.
The date became a word, an anniversary
That we inscribed with meanings - who keep so few,

More likely to name an airport for an actor
Or athlete than "First of May" or "Fourth of July."
In the movies we dream up, our captured heroes

Tell the interrogator their commanding officer's name
Is Colonel Donald Duck - he writes it down, code
Of a lowbrow memory so assured it's nearly

Aristocratic. Some say the doomed firefighters
Before they hurried into the doomed towers rote
Their Social Security numbers on their forearms.

Easy to imagine them kidding about it a little,
As if they were filling our some workday form.
Will Rogers was a Cherokee, a survivor

Of expropriation. A roper, a card. For some,
A hero. He had turned sixteen the year
That Frederick Douglass died. Douglass was twelve

When Emily Dickinson was born. Is even Donald
Half-forgotten? - Who are the Americans, not
A people by blood or religion? As it turned out,

The donated blood not needed, except as meaning.
And on the other side that morning the buy
Who shaved off all his body hair and screamed

The name of God with his boxcutter in his hand.
O Americans - as Marianne Moore would say,
Whence is our courage? Is what holds us together

A gluttonous dreamy thriving? Whence our being?
In the dark roots of our music, impudent and profound? -
Or in the Eighteenth Century clarities

And mystic totems of the Founders:
The Eye of the Pyramid watching over us,
Hexagram of Stars protecting the Eagle's head

Liberty Island 1998

From terror of pox, from plague and radiation.
And if they blow up the Statute of Liberty -
Then the survivors might likely in grief, terror

And excess build a dozen more, or produce
A catchy song about it, its meaning as beyond
Meaning as those symbols, or Ray Charles singing "America

The Beautiful." Alabaster cities, amber waves,
Purple majesty. The back-up singers in sequins
And high heels for a performance - or in the studio

In sneakers and headphones, engineers at soundboards,
Musicians, all concentrating, faces as grave
With purpose as the harbor Statue herself.

Written for the September 8, 2002 edition of The Washington Post Magazine. Robert Pinsky can be heard reading the poem on the Magazine home page at washingtonpost.com and will be conducting a chat at 1 p.m. on Monday at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.