Bronze business man

Suit covered in ash

Debris everywhere

Briefcase open

Staring down at his waiting work.

He'll never get to that.

Did he know

Death waited instead?

Everything around him transformed

Rendered unrecognizable

In the moment

The sky rained down.

Poor bronze man

You are a stand in

For all of us

That awful day.

You are Everyman's son.

You are Everywoman's child

Still sitting impossibly frozen

Amidst the dust and debris.

Hate leads to this.

What is there left to say?

What is there left to mourn?

No more music

No more sound

Struck dumb

To feel what has come to pass.

And what the poet said is true:

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper."^a

^a The Hollow Men, TS Eliot

In the aftermath of the bombing of the World Trade Center Towers, many searched for ways to find meaning or solace.

became useful expressions of the search. A photograph of J Seward Johnson's sculpture, "Double Check," in Liberty Park, near the World Trade Center, was the inspiration for this painting and poem. In the midst of a normal day, a maelstrom raged around this "Everyman." It is fitting that in the months since the tragedy, this sculpture has become a memorial of sorts, representing those who died in the bombing of the World Trade Center Towers.