Five years on

Award-winning British poet Simon Armitage–favourite to become Poet Laureate at the end of Andrew Motion‘s term in 2008–has written a poem to mark the fifth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.

Armitage’s poem, ‘Out Of The Blue‘, is a profoundly moving verse libre portrayal of a British trader’s day in New York City on September 11th, 2001. The narration will soon be aired next Monday on Channel Five, read by actor Rufus Sewell. The broadcast will also include actual footage and memories from victim’s families.

Below are several stanzas from canto thirteen. Click here to read the poem in its entirety.

Out Of The Blue

All lost.
All lost in the dust.
Lost in the fall and the crush and the dark.
Now all coming back.

Five years on, nothing in place:
the hole in the ground

still an open wound,
the gaps in the sky still empty space,

the scene of the crime still largely the same…
but everything changed.

– Simon Armitage

See also: Five years on