Unity and community on the Oval

Photos by Jo McCulty More than 2,000 Ohio State community members gathered on the Oval Sept. 19, the first day of classes, for a candlelight vigil to mourn the thousands of lives lost in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Friends and strangers alike held hands in prayer, and were encouraged to maintain the sense of community and compassion toward others that has arisen from the tragedy.

As part of the ceremony, which featured several University speakers, English Professor David Citino read a poem, Cell Phone, that he wrote for the vigil.

Cell Phone

This is the awful music of our days. A cell phone rings and rings. We lift it to our ear, and all at once dust

falls over lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, and dust blows all the way to Columbus, our state's name now

two moans around a shriek of grief, disbelief, Oh!ÐHi!-Oh!, dust darkening the Olentangy and Scioto, Alum Creek,

all rivers running down to the Ohio, up to Lake Erie, caking our faces and hair, so that we are all the same hue,

black ones, brown, yellow, red and white suddenly ashen, streaked with tears like those ancients ones who mourned

in dust and ash. Look at us. We're older than ever we've been. Sirens rise, and those thunders we'll never forget,

louder than our laboring hearts. I know you're not going to believe this, but buildings have disappeared! Now,

words unimaginable. Hello, Honey. It's me. Your husband, loving wife, your baby girl. I'm calling from far above, below.

It doesn't look good. I want you to know whatever happens to me I love you. If you love me back, promise this never

will happen again to anyone. You'll hear my voice again never, except in your mortal dreams, the troubled winds.

You'll never be again as you were. Click. He's gone! She's no longer there! Now what are we going to do?

O citizens, we must never forget how precious are those voices who've gone out of our lives, those songs

the history of loss and regret. How easily they slip away, breaths soft as snowfall, as innocent as the stars

ticking above. Mom. Can you hear me? Dad? Squeeze my hand if you're still with us. We must calculate

the distance between the worst and best we can be. We've been burned by the fires scouring vast craters

of hatred, barred cells of closed minds. And we've seen a gathering spirit deep and inexhaustible, a hospice

of hands reaching out to hands that need, the toiling of rugged archangels in uniform, helmets, thick coats.

When do they sleep, we wonder? A phone rings. All over the world, the phones go off. Hello. I love you.

I'm on a plane. I'm sitting at my desk, looking at your picture, our sweet babies. It doesn't look good.

There's three of us who are going to do something about it. Goodbye. Hello. I love you. Goodbye.

Hello, Mommy! The building is on fire. I can't breathe. The messages continue, murmurs and words

from beyond the stink of this smoldering world. They're trying to reach us, knowing we're running

out of time. Find a way, they say, to persevere, if not to love, at least to live with one another.

After injustice is punished, realize you are one and the same, whatever your fictions of difference.

As terrible as you feel now, our going must give hope, show how desperate a life can be when you forget

what being human means. Accept this life that is your gift. Learn your way out of the tunnels of dark

to the beauty inside that makes us worthy of each other. Goodbye. Hello. Goodbye. Hello. Goodbye. Hello.

-- By DAVID CITINO, Ohio State Professor of English