Jack Howard - The Falling Man lyrics

On September the eleventh, in America, In the first true year of the millennium, I watched on television men and women Jumping to their actual d**hs. Two hundred, perhaps, though the bodies Weren't for counting in the final rubble. Each decided the manner of their execution: Incineration (apocalypse style), or free fall Into the waiting gift of air. All this was later denied, foolishly. One became famous. A single frame Extracted from the grim cinema Of all these dives of d**h. He became known as The Falling Man; Upside down, his splayed legs Dancing a cruel parodic dance of flight. His context was circumscribed; the tower Not yet down, all you see is the mosaic Of sky-scraper windows; no fear-whitened faces Distract from him. The building's wound, The blackening smoke, is out of frame. To this day, no one knows his name. He fell before the tower, prepared its way. A hundred or so floors of concrete and steel Followed his path; his tomb Ground Zero: The apotheosis of erasure, nullity. He lay like the tens of million others, In the Somme, Dresden, Kampuchea, Unmarked, "known only to God." He is both the hero and the victim Of these times; for all of us he falls, Always, upended into the air's indifference.