Remembering 9/11

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Ohio State reflects with WOSU programming and a moment of silence before Saturday's home football game.

The following is a poem by the late university poet laureate, David Citino, written for the one-year anniversary of the attacks:

9.11.2002

As they came down to earth, those betrayed souls,

they knew that no creator worships fire

or thinks it good to fashion only holes.

(Some misbelievers say that God is ire.)

Two towers and our darling daughters, sons,

one year ago today heard thermal screams.

The fire fell and burnished them to stones

we cherish now, new pearls, the twisted beams

an alphabet of O's that froze our hearts.

It is the sacred part of memory,

each aching loss we gain when love departs,

to conjure hope. Each hero's name will be

a call to change the world they grew too bright

to need, their voices urging us toward light.

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