Scott Bentley

The Pit, a Cento

—in memory of
09.11.01

“It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

Abraham Lincoln

Address at the Dedication of the
Gettysburg National Cemetery
November 19, 1863

The system was breaking down.

Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it's gone. Lana Turner has collapsed!

Because nobody knew whether it was Monday or Tuesday

we dropped when the last
soldier had passed and the confetti
was buried in the ash can.

It was quite a day. Blow the place up!
That was my advice. (I got tired of D days)
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left.

Where does the evil of the year go
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked

like fate and I wanted to say, "Don't you see?"

I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed.

Yes, we're way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until

nothing's left except this
when September takes New York

            and everyone and I
            make even the trestle to shake
            the dead where they lie awaiting
                                                      the hearses.

I'd like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I've lost

my voice and love you so much
and in a sense we're all winning

we're alive.

Ah, what can ever be more stately to me than mast-
headed Manhattan?

When the house falls you shiver
in the vacant lumber of your poetry.

Our pursuers were swifter
than the eagles of the sky.
They waited in ambush for us
in the wilderness. We have to pay

for our drinking water. Call me Ishmael.
Poe predicted the whole Civil War.

Carefully now will there be a Grail or a bomb which tears the
heart out of things? "The enemy is in your own country." But
when the gas explodes the ghosts disappear.

(may a lost god damballah, rest or save us
against the murders we intend…

So strong you thump O' terrible
drums—so loud you bugles blow.

…truth is marching on and everyone
is surprised and no one understands

why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change

comes over him. How funny you are today New York.

I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly

Beauty is so rare a th—

and everyone and I
stopped breathing.

Compiled from the writing of John Ashberry, Amiri Baraka, Barbara Guest, Julia Ward Howe, Herman Melville, Frank O'Hara, Lawrence Raab, Jack Spicer, Walt Whitman, and the prophet Jeremiah.