This sky of lost miles - Ranjit Hoskote

Shield your eyes from this oblong patch of light
where the towers once stood, where now there floods
on our TV screens this sky of lost miles, miles yet to be
– now never to be – redeemed, this sky that showers
a rain of ash and scorched maple leaves,
of powdered glass that settles on bridges and cars, a rain through which
phantoms trundle their barrows, carrying heads, arms, bricks
that rained from the burning towers, and through this poisoned rain we see
as if for the first time, a sky that showers missiles without warning,
striking without prejudice the present sacrifice.
Heap up your cinders, pray for your dead, our dead:
Baghdad, too, was a city of high towers once, New York.

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Ranjit Hoskote (born 1969) India