The Twin Towers, by John M. Davis

The Great Tower of Babel, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlands) 1563

​The Twin Towers
 
Bruegel the Elder painted twin towers, unidentical twins,  
in significant ways like the ones we built, hoping 
to speak to our gods, 
 
              and we too were thrown into confusion.  
 
disoriented and bewildered, we jabber and gibber,
gabble and babble: a people dispersed, missing, 
lost in their incoherence, their namelessness.
those remaining feel only a vague sense of being home, 
like strangers in a nation of their own creation,  
still searching in vain for meaningful words, phrases,
for structure, patterns and purpose -- for a prior place, 
its found feeling, a sense of hope and communion. 
still searching decades later. 
 
our story is discussed, not as it happened, 
as another consequence of our own hubris, trade
and the interplay of greed and hunger on a world stage,
but as a memory, like a pebble thrown in a pond: 
the reaction peaks, ripples spread, then level out.
but the stone disappears, sinks deeper and darker.  
there’s no bottom to its abyss.  we’re stuck in a time, 
a dimension that follows our descent, 
decades after we left it.

John M. Davis
​
John M. Davis currently lives in Visalia, California.  His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, includingDescant (Canada), The Comstock Review, Gyroscope Review, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Constellations and Reunion: The Dallas Review.  The Mojave, a chapbook, was published by the Dallas Community Poets. 

The Little Tower of Babel, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlands) c. 1560s