On the Number 911

The 456th odd number = 911

The 156th prime numbers = 911

Sum of the 5th, 46th, and 126th prime numbers = 11 + 199 + 701 = 911

Sum of the 3rd, 87th, and 88th prime numbers = 5 + 449 + 457 = 911

The 911th digit of pi = 2 (duality)

The 1533th-1535th digits of pi = 911

The 911th digit of phi = 9

The 95th-97th digits of phi = 911

The 561th-563th digits of phi = 911

10)

Atomic Number of Fluorine (F) = 9 (9 protons & 9 electrons)
Fluorine is a pale yellow, corrosive gas, and the most electronegative and reactive of all elements.

11)

Atomic Number of Sodium (Na) = 11 (11 protons & 11 electrons). Sodium is a silvery white alkali metal.
Sodium Fluoride (NaF) is a white crystalline solid with melting point of 996^o C.

12)

AT&T announces their designation of 911 as a universal emergency number
at a press conference in the Washington DC on January 12, 1968. ( History of 911).
The first 911 call was made from Haleyville, Alabama, by Alabama Speaker of the House,
Rankin Fite on Feb. 16, 1968 to Tom Bevill, a U.S. Representative. (911 File)

13)

9/11 is the numerical designation for September 11, the 254th day of a non-leap year (111 days to end of year).
German bombs hit Buckingham Palace in London on Sept. 11, 1940.
Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev died on Sept. 11, 1971.
Chilean President Salvador Allende killed in a violent coup on Sept. 11, 1973.
American author O. Henry (9/11/1862-6/5/1910) born on Sept. 11, 1862.
British author D.H. Lawrence (9/11/1885-3/2/1930) born on Sept. 11, 1885.
Beatles recorded their first single for EMI "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" on Sept. 11, 1962

14)

9/11 is the short term for the September 11 terrorist downing of New York's World Trade Center.
On Language: 9/11; 9-11-2001.org; 9/11 Poetry Resources;
"U.S. Attacked" (NY Times, 9-12-2001);
"After the Fall" (NY Times, 9-23-2001);
"A Nation Challenged: One Year Later" (NY Times, 9-11-2002);
A Sept. 11 Reading List (NY TIMES, Sep. 8, 2002)
Time Magazine: 9/11 One Year Later (9-11-2002); New Yorker: 9/11/2001 Archive
New day of infamy (Boston Globe, Tuesday, 9/11/2001) "Coping With Tragedy" (Rabbi Jacob Pressman, Sermon, 9/19/2001)

15)

911 is the winning number in the New York Lottery on 9/11/2002
Eerie 9 - 1 - 1 Lottery Draws Interest (Associated Press, September 12, 2002)
On the anniversary of Sept. 11, the winning numbers in the New York lottery were 9-1-1.
Lottery officials said Thursday that 5,631 people had selected the tragic numbers. They won $500 each.

16)

Historical Events in the Year 911:
Sept. 2, 911: Viking monarch Oleg of Kiev, Russia, signed a treaty with the Byzantines.
The Carolingian dynasty (752-911) of Frankish rule ended in Germany.
The Virgin Mary's veil donated by Charles the Bald in 876 was displayed
above the city walls of Chartres which repelled a Viking attack in 911.

17)

When Chartres was attacked by the Normans in 911, the Veil of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(Sainte Chemisa, Voile de la Vierge, or S. Tunica BVM), was carried in procession by
the monks of the cathedral. When the French soldiers caught sight of the sacred relic,
they were energized, and conquered the Normans, saving Chartres.

18)

Book 9, Hymn 11 of the Rig Veda is an invocation to Indra's friend Soma Pavamana:
1. SING forth to Indu, O ye men, to him who is purified,
Fain to pay worship to the Gods.
2 Together with thy pleasant juice the Atharvans have commingled milk,
Divine, devoted to the God.
3 Bring, by thy flowing, weal to kine, weal to the people, weal to steeds.
Weal, O thou King, to growing plants
4 Sing a praise-song to Soma brown of hue, of independent might.
The Red, who reaches up to heaven.
5 Purify Soma when effused with stones which bands move rapidly,
And pour the sweet milk in the meath.
6 With humble homage draw ye nigh; blend the libation with the curds:
To Indra offer Indu up.
7 Soma, foe-que chief o'er men, doing the will of pour forth
Prosperity upon our kine.
8 Heart-knower, Sovran of the heart, thou art effused,
O Soma, that Indra may drink thee and rejoice.
9 O Soma Pavamana, give us riches and heroic strength,—
Indu! with. Indra for ally.
Rig Veda IX.11 (circa 1500 B.C.)

19)

9:11 in Homer's Odyssey:
A cheerful gathering of all the people
Sitting side by side throughout the halls,
Feasting and listening to a singer of tales,
The tables filled with food and drink,
The server drawing wine from the bowl
And bringing it around to fill our cups.
For me this is th finest thing in the world.

Homer's Odyssey, Book IX.6-12 (circa 800 BC)
(translated by Stanley Lombardo, Hackett, Indianapolis, 2000, p. 125), Samuel Butler's translation

20)

9th Hexagram of the I Ching: Hsiao Ch'u / The Taming Power of the Small

THE JUDGMENT:
THE TAMING POWER OF THE SMALL
Has success.
Dense clouds, no rain
from our western region.

THE IMAGE:
The wind drives across heaven:
The image of TAMING POWER OF THE SMALL.
Thus the superior man
Refines the outward aspect of his nature.

21)

11th Hexagram of the I Ching: T'ai / Peace

THE JUDGMENT:
PEACE.
The small departs,
The great approaches.
Good fortune. Success.

THE IMAGE:
Heaven and earth unite: the image of PEACE.
Thus the ruler divides and completes
the course of heaven and earth,
And so aids the people.

22)

9:11 of Genesis: God's covenant with Noah after the Flood:
And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more
by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
Genesis 9.11

23)

9:11 of Deuteronomy: Moses receives Ten Commandments from God:
And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the LORD
gave me the two tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant.
Deuteronomy 9.11

24)

9:11 of Job: Job portrays an invisible God:
Lo, he goes by me, and I see him not: he passes on also, but I perceive him not.
Job 9.11

25)

9:11 of Psalms: David sings praises to the Lord & to vanish the enemies:
I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will show forth all thy marvellous works.
I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High.
O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end:
and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.
Sing praises to the LORD, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings.
Psalms 9.1, 9.2, 9.6, 9.11 (1034 B.C.)

26)

9:11 of Isaiah: Lord join Rezin's enemies together after the bricks fall down:
The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones:
the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.
Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him,
and join his enemies together;
Isaiah 9.10, 9.11 (712 B.C.)

27)

9:11 of Daniel: Curse on those who sinned against God:
Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey
thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law
of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.
Daniel 9.11

28)

9:11 of Amos: God to raise up the fallen house of David:
In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen,
and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins,
and I will build it as in the days of old:
Amos 9.11

29)

Line 911 of Aeschylus's The Furies
Wasting Earth1s offspring,— Justice, hear my call!—
And thorough all the land in deadly wise
Shall scatter venom, to exude again
In pestilence of men.
What cry avails me now, what deed of blood,
Unto this land what dark despite?
Alack, alack, forlorn
Are we, a bitter injury have borne!
Alack, O sisters, O dishonoured brood
Of mother Night!

Aeschylus (525 BC-456 BC), The Furies, Lines 907-916

30)

Line 911 of Sophocles's Oedipus the King
But pride begets the mood of tyrant power;
Pride filled with many thoughts, yet filled in vain,
Untimely, ill-advised,
Scaling the topmost height,
Falls down the steep abyss,
Down to the pit, where step that profits
It seeks in vain to take.
I cannot ask the Gods to stop midway
The conflict sore that works our country1s good;
I cannot cease to call on God for aid.

Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC), Oedipus the King, Lines 902-911

31)

Line 911 of Euripides's Heracles
Aged and white-haired sirs...
What is this shout you make to me?
... dreadful is all within!
No prophet do I need to tell me this!
The children are dead.
Alas!

Euripides (484 BC-406 BC), Heracles, (421-416 BC), Lines 910-915
(translated by David Kovacs, Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 396-397)

32)

9:11 of Book of Enoch: Archangels saw bloodshed on earth
And then Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel looked down from heaven and saw much blood
being shed upon the earth, and all lawlessness being wrought upon the earth...
And Thou knows all things before they come to pass, and Thou sees these things and Thou does
suffer them, and Thou does not say to us what we are to do to them in regard to these.
Book of Enoch 9.1, 9.11 (circa 105 B.C.-64 B.C.)
translated by R. H. Charles, S.P.C.K., London, 1917, pp. 36-37

33)

9:11 of Acts: Saul goes to Straight Street to restore his eyesight:
And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and
inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth,
Acts 9:11

34)

9:11 of 2nd Corinthians: Be thankful to God for enriching us:
Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.
2nd Corinthians 9:11

35)

9:11 of Revelation: Angel Abaddon of the bottomless pit:
And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name
in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
Revelation 9:11

36)

9:11 in the Bhagavad Gita
(Krishna's lecture to Arjuna on the purity of Spirit):
But the fools of the world know not me when they see me
in my own human body. They know not my Spirit supreme,
the infinite God of this all.
Bhagavad Gita 9.11 (circa 400 BC)
(translated by Juan Mascaró, Penguin, 1962, p. 81)

37)

9:11 of Buddha's Dhammapada: On Evil (circa 240 BC)
Some people are born again;
evil-doers go to hell;
righteous people go to heaven;
those who are free from all
evil propensities attain nirvana.
Buddha, Dhammapada Chapter IX.11 (Verse 126)
(translated from the Pali by Irving Babbitt, Dhammapada,
Oxford University Press, London, 1936, p. 21)

38)

9:11 of Buddha's Anguttara Nikaya: Sariputta's Lion's Roar
Just as, Lord, people use water to wash things clean and unclean,
things soiled with dung, urine, spittle, pus and blood, yet for all that
the water has no revulsion, loathing or disgust towards it; even so, Lord,
do I dwell with a heart that is like water, vast exalted and measureless,
without hostility and without ill will. However, one in whom mindfulness
directed on the body in regard to the body is not present may well hit
a fellow monk and leave without an apology.
Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya (Numerical Discourses of the Buddha) IX.11 (240 BC)
(translated by Nyanaponika Thera & Bhikkhu Bodhi, AltaMira Press, 1999, pp. 231-233)

39)

9:11 of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyanakakarika:
If seer and hearer and feeler are different, then
when there is a seer, there also would be a hearer,
and as such there would be a plurarity of selves.
If he, to whom belongs seeing, hearing, etc. and feeling,
etc., is not evident, then even these would not be evident.
Nagarjuna (113-213 AD), Mulamadhyanakakarika (Philosophy of the Middle Way)
Chapter 9, Verses 9 & 11 "Examination of the Prior Entity (Parva-pariksa)
(translated by David J. Kalupahana, SUNY Press, Albany, 1986, pp. 192-193)

40)

9:11 of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
If thou art able, correct by teaching those who do wrong;
but if thou canst not, remember that indulgence is given to thee
for this purpose. And the gods, too, are indulgent to such persons;
and for some purposes they even help them to get health, wealth, reputation;
so kind they are. And it is in thy power also; or say, who hinders thee?

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD), Meditations, Book IX.11 (167 AD)
( translated by George Long, P. F. Collier & Son, NY, 1909).

41)

9:11 of Plotinus Second Ennead, II.9.11 "Against the Gnostics"
Now if the Soul has not actually come down but has illuminated the darkness,
how can it tly be said to have declined? Again, if the soul possesses the plan
of a Universe, and by virtue of this plan illuminates it, why do not that
illumination and the creating of the world take place simultaneously...
And why is fire the first creation?
Plotinus (204-270 AD), The Enneads, II.9.11
(translated by Stephen MacKenna, 4th Ed., Faber & Faber, London, 1969, pp. 143-144)

42)

9:11 of Plotinus Fifth Ennead, V.9.11 "The Intellectual Principle"
The imitative arts— painting, sculpture, dancing, pantomimic gesturing—
are, largely, earth-based; they follow models found in sense...
Geometry, as a science of the Intellectual entities, hold place There:
so, too, philosophy, whose high concern is Being.
Plotinus (204-270 AD), The Enneads, V.9.11
(translated by Stephen MacKenna, 4th Ed., Faber & Faber, London, 1969, pp. 440-441)

43)

9:11 of Plotinus Fifth Ennead, VI.9.11 "On the Good, or the One"
This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: 'Nothing Divulged to the Uninitiate':
the Supreme is not to be made in a common story, the holy things may not be uncovered
to the stranger, to any that has not himself attained to see...
he is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity;
once this ascent is achieved; reasoning is in abeyance and all Intellection and even,
to dare the word, the very self: caught away, filled with God, he has in perfect stillness
attained isolation; all the being calmed, he turns neither to this side nor to that,
not even inwards to himself, utterly resting he has become very rest. He belongs no longer
to the order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty, he has overpassed even the choir
of virtues... When the soul begins again to mount, self-gathered it is no longer in the order
of being; it is in the Supreme... move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and through
the Wisdom in That to the Supreme. This is the life of the Gods and the godlike.
Plotinus (204-270 AD), The Enneads, VI.9.11
(translated by Stephen MacKenna, 4th Ed., Faber & Faber, London, 1969, pp. 624-625)

44)

9:11 of Augustine's Confessions, "Oh, in peace!" and "the self-same!"
And with a loud cry from my heart, I called out in the following verse,
"Oh, in peace!" and "the self-same!" Oh, what said he, "I will lay me down and sleep!"
For who shall hinder us, when "shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory?" And Thou art in the highest degree "the self-same,"
who changest not; and in Thee is the rest which forgetteth all labour, for there is
no other beside Thee, nor ought we to seek after those many other things which are
not what Thou art; but Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in hope. These things
I read, and was inflamed; but discovered not what to do with those deaf and dead,
of whom I had been a pestilent member, -- a bitter and a blind declaimer against
the writings be-honied with the honey of heaven and luminous with Thine own light;
and I was consumed on account of the enemies of this Scripture.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), Confessions, IX.11 (400 AD)

45)

9:11 of Augustine's Tractates on the Gospel of John, "Noah's Ark"
Christ was represented also in Noah and in that ark of the whole world.
For why were all kinds of animals shut in, in the ark but to signify all
nations? For God could again create every kind of animals. When as yet
they were not, did He not say, "Let the earth bring forth," and the earth
brought forth? From the same source He could make anew, whence He then
made; by a word He made, by a word He could make again: were it not that
He was setting before us a mystery, and filling up the second water-pot
of prophetical dispensation, that the world might by the wood be delivered
in a figure; because the life of the world was to be nailed on wood.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), Tractates on the Gospel of John, IX.11 (416 AD)

46)

9th & 11th Verses of Vairagya-Satakam (The Hundred Verses on Renunciation):
Though my sight is obstructed by blindness,
and the body can raise itself on the staff,
this body startles at the thought of dissolution by death!

Enjoyments earned by merit multiply so greatly
in the case of people attached to them,
only to bring them misery and peril!
Bhartrihari (circa 650 AD)
Vairagya-Satakam (The Hundred Verses on Renunciation): 9, 11
(translated by Swami Madhavananda, 1921)

47)

9:11 of Santideva's Bodhicaryavatara:
There is no evil in the destruction of a man
who is illusion (maya), because of the absence
of thought; but because thought is affected by
illusion (maya), sin and merit have arisen.
Santideva's Bodhicaryavatara: Entering the Path of Enlightenment
IX.11 (Perfection of Wisdom: Prajña-paramita) (circa 700 AD)
(translated by Marion L. Matics, Macmillan, London, 1970, p. 212)

48)

9:11 of Valmiki's Yoga Vasishtha:
Rid yourself of all sense particulars and
you will have a knowledge of universality:
you will begin to comprehend the all-embracing Atman
Valmiki (c. 750 AD), Yoga Vasishtha, 9.11
The World Within the Mind (4th edition)
(translated by Hari Prasad Shastri, Shanti Sadan, London, 1969, p. 56)

49)

9:11 of Mohammed's Holy Koran
But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate,
they are your brethren in faith;
and We make the communications clear for a people who know.
Mohammed, Holy Koran 9:11 (7th century AD)
(translated from by M.H. Shakir, Koran: The Immunity, 1983)

50)

Case 9 of Hekiganroku: Joshu's Four Gates
A monk asked Joshu, "What is Joshu?" (Chinese: Chao Chou)
Joshu said, "East Gate, West Gate, North Gate, South Gate." Setcho's Verse:
Its intention concealed, the question came;
The Diamond King's eye was as clear as a jewel.
There stood the gates, north, south, east, and west,
But the heaviest hammer blow could not open them.
Setcho (980-1052), Hekiganroku, 9 (Blue Cliff Records)
(translated by Katsuki Sekida, Two Zen Classics, 1977, p. 172)

51)

9:11 of St. Bernard's On Loving God: "love purify our souls"
'No longer do we love God because of our necessity, but because we have tasted
and seen how gracious the Lord is'. Our temporal wants have a speech of their
own, proclaiming the benefits they have received from God's favor. Once this
is recognized it will not be hard to fulfill the commandment touching love
to our neighbors; for whosoever loves God aright loves all God's creatures.
Such love is pure, and finds no burden in the precept bidding us purify our souls,
in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), On Loving God
Chapter IX: Of the second and third degrees of love, IX.7-12

52)

Vision 9:11 of Hildegard of Bingen "empty gap between tower & pillar"
The Church is moving toward perfection but only God knows what it will be.
And between that tower and the pillar of the humanity of the Savior
there is nothing but a foundation laid, on which the wall has not yet
been built; thus there appears an empty gap, which is one cubit long.
And this tower is not yet finished, but is being diligently constructed,
with great skill and speed, by a great many workers.

Vision 9:20 of Hildegard of Bingen "the insane invade the tower"
And you see that some, who are very dirty and black and act insane,
come from the North and burst into the building; they invade the tower,
carrying on and hissing at it like serpents.
Hildegard of Bingen(1098-1179), Scivias (1141)
Vision 9.11 "The Tower of the Church" (Book 3: History of Salvation Symbolized by a Building)
(translated by Mother Columba Hart & Jane Bishop, Paulist Press, NY, 1990, pp. 455-456, 461)

53)

Letter 9, Line 11 of Hildegard of Bingen "God grants us happiness and sunshine"
God's Spirit breathes and speaks: in wintertime, God takes care of the branch that is love.
In summer, God causes that same branch to be green and to sprout with blossoms.
God removes diseased outgrowths that could do harm to the branch.
It is through the little brook spring from stones in the east that other bubbling waters
are washed clean, for it flows more swiftly. Besides, it is more useful than the other
waters because there is no dirt in it. These lessons also apply to every human being
to whom God grants one day of the happiness and the glowing sunrise of glory.
Such a person will not be oppressed by the strong north wind with its hateful foes of discord.
So look to the One who has moved you and who desires from your heart a burnt offering,
the gift of keeping all of God's commandments. Sigh for the Divine. And may God grant you
what you desire and what you pray for in your need, the joy of a son. The living eye of God
looks on you: it wants to have you and you will live for eternity.
Hildegard of Bingen(1098-1179), Letter 9: Hildegard to Bertha, Queen of Greece & Empress of Byzantium
(Edited by Matthew Fox, Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs
Bear & Co., Sante Fe, New Mexico, 1987, p. 292)

54)

9:11 of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival: "find the holy Grail"
"Open!"— To whom? Who are you?
"For entrance to thy heart I sue."
For narrow space you're pining.
"What if it be confining,
Of crowding thou needst not complain:
To tell thee wonders I am fain."
Ah, Dame Adventure, is it you?
Our charming friend, how does he do?
I mean the noble Parzival,
Whom Cundry drove with words of gall
That he should find the holy Grail,
When many a lady must bewail

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1165-1217) Parzival (1195)
Book IX "Parzival Visits Trevrizent" Book IX, Lines 1-12
(translated by Edwin H. Zeydel & Bayard Quincy Morgan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1951, p. 193)

55)

Chapter 9, Section 11 of William of Auvergne's The Trinity, or the First Principle: wisdom & light
Our wisdom is a wisdom, as it were, impressed after the manner of an exemplum,
and like light infused and illuminated, and like a book inscribed with the likeness
of things, and ike the appearance of forms reflected in a mirror. For our intellect
is like a mirror in which the appearances of the intelligibles are reflected...
This wisdom is brilliant light, beyond which there is no light. Hence, it is the
light of all lights, since every other light is but illumined light, not giving
light through its essence... This, then is the reason why this wisdom is called
true light [cf. John 1.9] and essential light, giving light and illuminating by
its essence. For this reason it is called the book of life [cf. Revelation 3.5]
and the scripture of truth, because in it one can read the series of all ages.
William of Auvergne (1180-1249), The Trinity, or the First Principle, Ch. IX.65
(translated by Roland J. Teske & Francis C. Wade, Marquette University Press, Milwaukee, 1989, p. 105)

56)

Chapter 9, Section 11 of Dogen's Genjo Koan: know the essence of things
When the true law is not fully absorbed by our body and mind, we think that it is sufficient.
But if the right law is fully enfolded by our body and mind, we feel that something is missing.
For example, when you take a boat to sea, where mountains are out of sight, and look around,
you see only roundness; you cannot see anything else. But this great ocean is neither round
nor square. Its other characteristics are countless. Some see it as a palace, other as an ornament.
We only see it as round for the time being— within the field of our vision: this is the way
we see all things. Though various things are contained in this world of enlightenment, we can see
and understand only as far as the vision of a Zen trainee. To know the essence of all things,
you should realize that in addition to appearance as a square or circle, there are many other
characteristics of ocean and mountain and that there are many worlds. It is not a matter of
environment: you— must understand that a drop contains the ocean and that the right law
is directly beneath your feet.
Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), Genjo Koan, Ch. IX.11 (1233)
(Translated by Robert Aitken & Kazuaki Tanahashi, 1985, p. 73)
Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, North Point Press, San Francisco

57)

Quatrain 911 of Rumi: "He said, Die"
I said, Tell me what to do.
He said, Die.
I said, My soul is purer than a mountain stream.
He said, Die.
I said, But I shine like a candle,
I'm free like a butterfly. And you,
O your face illumines the whole world...
He said, Die.
Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), Kulliyat-e Shams, Quatrain 911
A Garden Beyond Paradise: Mystical Poetry of Rumi,
(Translated by Jonathan Star & Shahram Shiva, Bantam, NY, 1992, p. 72)

58)

Sermon 9 of Meister Eckhart: Waking Up to the Nearness of God's Kingdom"
God is always ready but we are very unready.
God is near to us but we are very far from him.
God is within but we are outside. God is at home
in us but we are abroad. The prophet says:
"God leads the righteous through the narrow
way into the broad path" (Wisdom 10:10).
This is so that they come to the fullest life.
God helps us that we all follow him so that he can
bring us to the point where we truly know him.
Meister Eckhart (1260-1329), Sermon 9 Section 11
Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality
(Translated by Matthew Fox, Doubleday, NY, 1980, p.141)

59)

Canto 9.11 of Inferno: Dante & Virgil at the Gate of Dis (Circle 6):

I' vidi ben sì com'ei ricoperse
lo cominciar con l'altro che poi venne,
che fur parole a le prime diverse;

But I saw well enough how he had covered
his first words with the words that followed after—
so different from what he had said before;

Inferno 9.10-12 ( Allen Mandelbaum translation, 1984)

60)

Canto 9.11 of Purgatorio: Dante falls asleep at Mt. Purgatory's valley:

quand'io, che meco avea di quel d'Adamo,
vinto dal sonno, in su l'erba inchinai
là 've già tutti e cinque sedavamo.

when I, who bore something of Adam with me,
feeling the need for sleep, lay down upon
the grass where now all five of us were seated.

Purgatorio 9.10-12 ( Allen Mandelbaum translation, 1984)

61)

Canto 9.11 of Paradiso: Dante's flight to the Sphere of Venus (3rd Heaven):

Ahi anime ingannate e fatture empie,
che da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori,
drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie!

Ah, souls seduced and creatures without reverence,
who twist your hearts away from such a Good,
who let your brows be bent on emptiness!

Paradiso 9.10-12 ( Allen Mandelbaum translation, 1984)

62)

Line 911 of Inferno: Dante descends to Hell's 4th circle & inquires about Fortune:

Le sue permutazion non hanno triegue;
necessità la fa esser veloce;
sì spesso vien chi vicenda consegue.

The changes that she brings are without respite:
it is necessity that makes her swift;
and for this reason, men change state so often.

Inferno 7.88-90 (Lines 910-912) ( Allen Mandelbaum translation, 1984)

63)

Line 911 of Purgatorio: Sordello leads Dante to flowery valley:

Tra erto e piano era un sentiero schembo,
che ne condusse in fianco de la lacca,
là dove più ch'a mezzo muore il lembo.

There was a slanting path, now steep, now flat;
it led us to a point beside the valley,
just where its bordering edge had dropped by half.

Paradiso 7.67-69 (Lines 910-912) ( Allen Mandelbaum translation, 1984)

64)

Line 911 of Paradiso: Dante sees the seal of Goodness in the Sphere of Mercury (2nd Heaven):

Ciò che da lei sanza mezzo distilla
non ha poi fine, perché non si move
la sua imprenta quand'ella sigilla.

All that derives directly from this Goodness
is everlasting, since the seal of Goodness
impresses an imprint that never alters.

Paradiso 7.67-69 (Lines 910-912) ( Allen Mandelbaum translation, 1984)

65)

9.11 in Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love
For if I look singularly to myself, I am right nought...
For in man is God, and God is in all.
I beheld the Shewing with all my diligence:
for in all this blessed Shewing I beheld
it as one in God's meaning...
All this was shewed by three ways:
by bodily sight, and by word formed
in mine understanding, and by spiritual sight.
Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 9, Line 11 (1371)
(translated by Grace Warrack, 1901)

66)

Dialogue 9, Line 11 of Catherine of Siena: "attend to interior virtues"
If you have this virtue of discernment, then whatever your state in life may be—
whether noble or superior or subject— all that you do for your neighbors will be
done with discernment and loving charity. For discernment and charity are engrafted
together and planted in the soil of that true humility which is born of knowledge.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), The Dialogue (1377), Dialogue 9, Paragraph 8
(Translated by Suzanne Noffke, Paulist Press, New York, 1980, pp. 40-41)

67)

Line 911 from the Pearl Poet's The Pearl:

Now, hynde, pat sympelnesse conez enclose,
I wolde pe aske a pynge expresse,
And paz I be bustwys as a blose,
Let my bone vayl neuerpelese.

Now, gracious lady, in whom sincerity dwells
I want to ask you something explicitly,
and though I am rough as a peasant,
let my request prevail.

The Pearl (c. 1370-1400) Lines 909-912 (End of Section XV)
(Ed. Malcolm Andrew & Ronald Waldron, University of Exeter Press, 1987, p. 97)

68)

Line 911 from the Pearl Poet's Purity or Cleanness:

Sodomas schal ful sodenly synk into grounde,
And pe rounde of Gomore gorde into helle,

Sodom shall fall suddenly, sink into the ground
And much of Gomorrah struck into hell,

Cleanness (c. 1370-1400) Lines 910-911
(Ed. Malcolm Andrew & Ronald Waldron, 1987, p. 59)

69)

Line 911 from the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
Gawain welcomed by the Lord of the Castle on Christmas

And alle the men in that mote maden much joye
To apere in his presense prestly that tyme,
That alle prys and prowes and pured thewes
Apendes to hys persoun, and praysed is euer;
Byfore alle men vpon molde his mensk is the most.

and all men in that keep were joyful
that they should be in the company of him
to whom belonged all fame, and valour,
and courtesy, and whose honour was praised
above that of all men on earth.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1375-1400) Lines 910-914
(Ed. Malcolm Andrew & Ronald Waldron, 1987, p. 59)

70)

Dialogue 9, Line 11 of Nicholas of Cusa: "reason shines clearly in things that understand"
Ferdinand: Say something about the universe, so I may better come upon a vision of God.
Nicholas: When with my bodily eyes I see the sky and earth and the objects which are in the sky
and on the earth, and when in order to imagine the universe I gather together what I have seen,
I behold intellectually each object of the universe in its own place and in suitable order and
in tranquility; and I contemplate the beautiful world and everything produced with reason [ratio].
And I find that reason shines forth in all things— as much in (1) things which merely exist (2)
things which both exist and live and in (3) things which exist, live, and understand. In the case of
the first things, it shines forth dimly, in the case of the second things, more bright and clearly;
but in the case of the third things, most clearly; and each of these three things, most clearly; and
in each of these three different modes reason shines forth in different ways in different things.
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), De Li Non Aliud (On God as Not-Other) (1461), Dialogue 9, Lines 1-14
(Translated by Suzanne Noffke, Paulist Press, New York, 1980, pp. 40-41)

71)

9:11 of Marsilio Ficino's On the Alchemical Art: "Of Nature"
What is therefore Nature? God is Nature, and Nature is God: understand it thus:
out of God there arises something next to him. Nature is therefore a certain invisible fire,
by which Zoroaster taught that all things were begotten, to whom Heraclitus the Ephesian
seems to give consent. Did not the spirit of the Lord, which is a fiery love, when it was
carried on the waters, put into them a certain fiery vigor? Since nothing can be generated
without heat. God inspired into created things, when it was said in the generation of the
world; increase and be ye multiplied, a certain germination, that is, a greeness, by which
all things might multiply themselves.
Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), On the Alchemical Art (1518), Ch. 9, Lines 6-11
(Transcribed by Justin von Budjoss, Theatrum Chemicum, Vol 2, Geneva, 1702, pp. 172-183)

72)

Lines 9 &11 of Mother Shipton's Prophecies: hail & disaster
And now a word, in uncouth rhyme
Of what whall be in future time
Then upside down the world shall be
And gold found at the root of tree
All England's sons that plough the land
Shall oft be seen with Book in hand
The poor shall now great wisdom know
Great houses stand in farflung vale
All covered o'er with snow and hail
A carriage without horse will go
Disaster fill the world with woe.
Mother Shipton (Ursula Sontheil) (1488-1561), Prophecies (1641)
The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sontheil Better Known as Mother Shipton
Arthur Wigley & Sons, Leeds, UK (1967); Hoaxes

73)

9.11 of Nostradamus's Centuries: death & pestilence

Le iuste à tort à mort l'on viendra mettre
Publiquement, & du milieu estaint:
Si grande peste en ce lieu viendra naistre,
Que les iugeans fouyr seront contraints.
Wrongly will they come to put the just one to death,
In public and in the middle extinguished:
So great a pestilence will come to arise in this place,
That the judges will be forced to flee.

Nostradamus (1503-1566), Centuries, Chapter 9, Verse 11 (1555)

74)

Tarot 16: men jumping from burning Tower (9/11 symbol) but Tarot Cards 9 &11 show Hermit & Justice


Waite Tarot Deck (1909), Symbolism; Marseille Tarot Deck (1760), Tarot History

75)

9.11 in Book II of St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul
There is nothing in contemplation or the divine inflow that of itself can give pain;
contemplation rather bestows sweetness and delight, as we shall say afterward.
The cause for not experiencing these agreeable effects is the soul's weakness
and imperfection at the time, its inadequate preparation, and the qualities
it possesses that are contrary to this light. Because of these the soul has
to suffer when the divine light shines upon it.
St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), Dark Night of the Soul, Chapter 9, Section 11 (1588)
(Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez, Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, 1991)

76)

9.11 of Clavis: The "Key" of Jacob Boehme "drawn down & swallowed"
Here now is poor Adam actually fallen away from all his former Happiness and Glory,
and has lost whatsoever was good and desirable both in himself and round about him:
He lies as dead, on the outmost Borders of the Spirit of this World. SOPHIA
has forsaken him, or rather he, having dealt treacherously, has forsaken Her,
and the Holy Band of the Marriage-Covenant that was between them is dissolved:
He is all over dark, and lies even under the Earth, over which he was to rule:
All the Stars shoot their Influences upon him, of which the very best are but
Death and Poison to that Life for which he was created: And nothing less could
he expect, but that every Moment he should be quite drawn down and swallowed up
in the Belly of Satan. This was his State and Condition after his Transgression,
and before he heard the Word of Free Grace, that the Woman's Seed should
bruise the Serpent's Head.
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), Clavis: The "Key" of Jacob Boehme,
Number IX, Lines 1-14 (1624), Translated by William Law (1686-1761)
(Introductory Essay by Adam McLean, Phane Press, Grande Rapids, Michigan, 1991)

77)

9:11 of Sonnet IX of William Shakespeare: "But beauty's waste"
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnets IX, Commentary

78)

Line 911 Bk 6 of Milton's Paradise Lost: "might have stood, yet fell"
As a despite done against the Most High,
Thee once to gain companion of his woe.
But listen not to his temptations; warn
Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have heard,
By terrible example, the reward
Of disobedience. Firm they might have stood,
Yet fell. Remember, and fear to transgress.
John Milton (1608-1674), Paradise Lost (1660), Lines 906-912

79)

9:11 of Milton's Paradise Lost: "this World a world of woe"
Those notes to tragic�foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience; on the part of Heaven,
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,
That brought into this World a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery,
John Milton (1608-1674), Paradise Lost (1660), IX.6-12

80):

Section 911 of Pascal's Pensees:
Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked?
This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.
Vince in bono malum.227 (Saint Augustine)
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees (1660), #911
( translated by William F. Trotter, 1931)

81)

9:11 of Pascal's Pensees: Mohammed & Christ
The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet.—
Mahomet was not foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold.
Mahomet slew; Jesus Christ caused His own to be slain.
Mahomet forbade reading; the Apostles ordered reading.
In fact, the two are so opposed that, if Mahomet took
the way to succeed from a worldly point of view,
Jesus Christ, from the same point of view, took the way to perish.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees (1660), IX.11 (#599)
( translated by William F. Trotter, 1931)

82)

Chapter 9 of Miguel de Molinos Spiritual Guide: "patience"
Through the fault and malice of others in having wronged and injured us,
God sees that our soul is improved by the benefit of patience.
Miguel de Molinos (1640-1696), The Spiritual Guide (1685), Bk I, IX.56

83)

9:11 of Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia (1837):
Order consists in celestial things ruling over spiritual things, through these over natural things
and through these over corporeal things; but when corporeal and natural things rule over spiritual
and celestial things, order is destroyed and then the man is an image of hell; and therefore the Lord
restores order by means of regeneration and then the man becomes an image of heaven... It is the reverse
with those who make life consist solely in corporeal things, that is, in cupidities, pleasures, appetites,
and matters of sense, perceiving no delight other than that which is of love of self and of the world...
With such, because corporeal and natural things rule over spiritual and celestial things, there is not
only no correspondence or obedience of external things, but the very reverse, and thus order is utterly
destroyed; and because order is destroyed, they cannot be other than images of hell.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Arcana Coelestia, IX.11
(Swedenborg Foundation, NY, 1965, pp. 439-440)

84)

9:11 of William Blake's Vala, or The Four Zoas: Loud Trumpet thundering from heaven
And tore them down, cracking the heavens across from immense to immense.
Then fell the fires of Eternity with loud & shrill
Sound of Loud Trumpet thundering along from heaven to heaven,
A mighty sound articulate: 'Awake ye dead, & come
To judgment from the four winds! Awake & come away!'
Folding like scrolls of the Enormous volume of Heaven & Earth,
With thunderous noise & dreadful shakings, rocking to & fro
The heavens are shaken & the Earth removed from its place,
The foundations of the Eternal hills discovered

William Blake (1757-1827)
Vala, or The Four Zoas (1797), 9th Night, Lines 9-17
Blake: The Complete Poems (2nd Edition)
Edited by W. H. Stevenson, Longman, London, 1989 (p. 432)

85)

9:11 of Wordworth's Excursions: "communicating good"
"To every Form of being is assigned,"
Thus calmly spake the venerable Sage,
"An 'active' Principle:--howe'er removed
From sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures; in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters, and the invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good
A simple blessing, or with evil mixed;
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds.
This is the freedom of the universe;
William Wordsworth (1770-1850), The Excursion, IX.1-16 (1814)
(Discourse of the Wanderer, and an Evening Visit to the Lake)

86)

Line 911 of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "one word were Lightning"
Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,— could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe— into one word,
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it like a sword.
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
Canto III.97 Lines 905-913 (1816)

87)

Canto 9, Verse 11 of Shelley's The Revolt of Islam: "melt in the white furnace"
'Those who were sent to bind me wept, and felt
Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,
Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt
In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,
A pause of hope and awe, the City bound,
Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth,
When in its awful shadow it has wound
The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,
Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
The Revolt of Islam: A Poem in Twelve Cantos, IX.11 (1817)

88)

Line 911 in Book II of John Keat's Endymion: "Olympian eagle's vision, is dark"
Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core
All other depths are shallow: essences,
Once spiritual, are like muddy lees,
Meant but to fertilize my earthly root,
And make my branches lift a golden fruit
Into the bloom of heaven: other light,
Though it be quick and sharp enough to blight
The Olympian eagle's vision, is dark,
Dark as the parentage of chaos. Hark!
John Keats (1795-1821), Endymion, Book II, Lines 904-912 (1817)

89)

9:11 in Tennyson's Merlin and the Gleam: "After it, follow it"
Not of the sunlight,
Not of the moonlight,
Not of the starlight!
O young Mariner,
Down to the haven,
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel,
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow The Gleam.
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Merlin and the Gleam, IX.1-12 (1889)
Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ed. Charles Tennyson, Collins, London, 1954, p. 577

90)

9:11 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851): "sea"
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large
brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer
so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the
sea.
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Moby-Dick or The Whale, Chapter 9, Lines 8-11
The Writings of Herman Melville, Vol. 6
Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1988 (p. 41)

91)

9/11/1856 Entry in Thoreau's Journals IX:74-80:
walked over what Alcott calls Farm Hill, east of his house...
Erigeron annuus [daisy fleabane], four feet high, by roadside;...
Henry walked me up their back yard, a gradual incline through an open field
of hawkweeds, daisies, buttercups, and red clover, to a wood-rail fence
at the top from where I could see Fall Mountain and the Connecticut River...
Later, while we drank tea on the porch, Frances read from Under the Lilacs
by Louisa May Alcott... "Are the lilacs still here?" I asked. "Are they ever,"
she said, pointing over my shoulder. "All along the road."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862),
Elevating Ourselves: Thoreau on Mountains
(Edited by J. Parker Huber, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1999, pp. 50-51)

92)

9/1861 Entry in Emerson's's Journals on the Civil War:
The war searches character, & acquits those whom I acquit, whom life acquits,
those whose reality & spontaneous honesty & singleness appear. Force it requires.
'Tis not so much that you are moral, as that you are genuine, sincere, frank, & bold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Journals, September 1861

93)

9:11 of Walt Whitman's Passage to India (1871): "secret of earth & sky"
Passage to more than India!
O secret of the earth and sky!
Of you, O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!
Of you, O woods and fields! Of you, strong mountains of my land!
Of you, O prairies! Of you, gray rocks!
O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!
O day and night, passage to you!
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Passage to India Section 9, Lines 10-16 (Lines 233-239)
A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, Vol. III, Poems, 1870-1891
(Edited by Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, William White
New York University Press, 1980, p. 573)

94)

911th Poem of Emily Dickinson:

Too little way the House must lie
From every Human Heart
That holds in undisputed Lease
A white inhabitant—

Too narrow is the Right between—
Too imminent the chance—
Each Consciousness must emigrate
And lose its neighbor once—

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
(edited by Thomas H. Johnson, 1955)

95)

9:11 of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: Part I

Nur wer die Leier schon hob
auch unter Schatten,
darf das unendliche Lob
ahnend erstatten.

Nur wer mit Toten von Mohn
aß, von dem ihren,
wird nicht den leisesten Ton
wieder verlieren.

Mag auch die Spieglung im Teich
oft uns verschwimmen:
Wisse das Bild.

Erst in dem Doppelbereich
werden die Stimmen
ewig und mild.

Only one who has lifted
his lyre for the dead
is also allowed to raise
a prophetic praise.

Only one who has eaten
poppies of the dead
carries that quietest tone
ever in his head.

What if the pond's reflection
dissolves before us:
Know the image.

Only where those two worlds join
are there pure voices,
calm, without age.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Sonnets to Orpheus (1921), I.9:1-14
(translated by Leslie Norris & Alan Keele, Camden House, Columbia SC, 1989, p. 9)

96)

9th Elegy, Line 11 of Rilke's Duino Elegies:
"Aber weil Hiersein viel ist, und weil uns scheinbar"
But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Duino Elegies (1923), IX.11-17
(translated by Stephen Mitchell, Random House, NY, 1982, p. 199)

97)

9/11/1912 Letter from D. H. Lawrence:
I write under the olive trees in view of the dark blue lake.
I should like some jam and jelly and apples.
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Letter to David Garnett (September 11, 1912) The Letters of D. H. Lawrence (1979), Volume I

98)

9:11 in James Joyce's Ulysses: "Goethe's judgments are so true"
—Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful
ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always feels
that Goethe's judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis.
Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the
door he gave his large ear all to the attendant's words: heard them: and was
gone.
James Joyce (1882-1941), Ulysses, (1922), Book IX, Lines 9-14

99)

9:11 in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: "Willingdone"
the one Willingdone. And the Willingdone git the band up. This (9.9)
is bode Belchum, bonnet to busby, breaking his secred word with a (9.10)
ball up his ear to the Willingdone. This is the Willingdone's hur- (9.11)
old dispitchback. Dispitch desployed on the regions rare of me (9.12)
Belchum. Salamangra! Ayi, ayi, ayi! Cherry jinnies. Figtreeyou! (9.13)

James Joyce (1882-1941), Finnegans Wake (1939), Page 9, Lines 9-13

100)

9:11 in Edna St. Vincent Millay's Sonnets #9:

Impious no less in ruin than in strength,
When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,
Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site
The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer.
SONNET 9.11-14 from Second April (1921)

I can endure, and that the lifted dust
Of man should settle to the earth again;
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
Between my ribs forever of hot pain.
SONNET 9.11-14 from The Harp-Weaver (1923)

Oh, never more, till my dissolving brain
Be powerless to evoke you out of air,
Remembered morning stars, more fiercely bright
Than all the Alphas of the actual night!
SONNET 9.11-14 from Fatal Interview (1931)

Where said the Race of Man, "Here let me drown"?
"Here let me die of hunger"?— "let me freeze"?
By nightfall he has built another town:
This boiling pot, this clearing in the trees.
SONNET 9.11-14 from Epitaph for the Race of Man (1934)

Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Harper & Row, NY, 1988, pp. 20, 32, 78, 172

Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892-1950)
Complete Sonnets #9

101)

9:11 in Wallace Stevens, An Ordinary Evening in New Haven: "simple seeing"
We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns
That fall upon it out of the wind. We seek

The poem of pure reality, untouched
By trope or deviation, straight to the word,
Straight to the transfixing object, to the object

at the exactest point at which it is itself,
Transfixing by being purely what it is,
A view of New Haven, say, through the certain eye,

The eye made clear of uncertainty, with the sight
Of simple seeing, without reflection. We seek
Nothing beyond reality. Within it,

Everything, the spirit's alchemicana
Included, the spirit that goes roundabout
And through included, not merely the visible,

The solid, but the movable, the moment,
The coming on of feasts and the habits of saints,
The pattern of the heavens and high, night air.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven IX.1-18
from The Auroras of Autumn, Knopf, NY (1950), (Collected Poems, pp. 465-489)
NY Times Obituary (8-3-1955)

102)

9:11 in William Carlos Williams, Spring and All: "Once"
What about all this writing?

O "Kiki"
O Miss Margaret Jarvis
The backhandspring

I : clean
clean
clean : yes.. New-York

Wrigley's, appendecitis, John Marin :
skyscraper soup —

Either that or a bullet !

Once
anything might have happened
You lay relaxed on my knees —
the starry night
spread out warm and blind
above the hospital —

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Spring and All, IX.1-16
Contact Publishing Co., Dijon (1923), pp. 38-39

103)

9:11 in H.D.'s The Walls Do Not Fall (1944):

Thoth, Hermes, the stylus,
the palette, the pen, the quill endure,

though our books are a floor
of smouldering ash under our feet;

though the burning of the books remains
the most perverse gesture

and the meanest
of man's mean nature,

yet give us, they still cry,
give us books,

folio, manuscript, old parchment
will do for cartridge cases;

irony is bitter truth
wrapped up in a little joke,

and Hatshepsut's name is still circled
with what they call the cartouche.

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)
Trilogy: The Walls Do Not Fall, Oxford University Press (1944), IX.1-16
New Directions Paperbook (1998), Introduction & Notes by Aliki Barnstone

104)

9:11 in Franklin Merell-Wolff's Pathways through to Space (1936):
Here is where Love enters in the highest sense, and Love is not
constrained by the causal law which governs with space and time.
Yet Love never fails the beloved. This Love excludes none, for—
I, Spirit, deny none of My children.
Such i not My Nature.
Ever waiting, above forgiveness,
I pour Myself in through the opened doors.
Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887-1985)
Pathways through to Space IX.10-16
"Concerning the Spontaneity of the Self" (8-27-1936) (2nd Edition, Julian Press, NY, 1973, p. 23)

105)

9/11/1936 Poem: "A Poetic Interlude" in Pathways through to Space (1936)
by Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887-1985), 1st stanza below:

Am I a man? Yet also am I a god,
For I am that which comprehends both gods and men.
I move among men in the form of a man,
Fallible, more or less good, like the rest.
Yet, also, I shine with the gods in Glory.
I compress Myself in the mineral,
Inert and long-enduring.
Ceaselessly I grow as a plant,
and am driven by desire as animal.
I am in all, yet ever Beyond all.
A Flame am I that nowhere remains;
I consume all.

Pathways through to Space (September 11, 1936)
LIV: "A Poetic Interlude" (Complete Poem)
(2nd Edition, Julian Press, NY, 1973, pp. 136-137)

106)

Page 911 in Hugh MacDiarmid's Complete Poems: 1920-1976:
And could should be would, of course, the blow being foul.
Two errors in one line! Blunden, chuck in your towel!
A 'poet' devoted not to composition
But to decomposition,
Do not imagine, traitor to humanity,
That your 'frightful' position is unique.

Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) (1892-1978),
The Battle Continues (1957), from Complete Poems
Volume II, page 911, lines 1-2, 5-6, 20-21
Edited by Michael Grieve & W. R. Aitken, London, 1978

107)

9:11 in Archibald MacLeish's Conquistador: "a bad sign: dangerous"

The road back has been covered with many winds:
The pinch of the five toes in the dust is illegible:
Before us are other lands and a new winter:
All the crows of the sky have crossed our fires:
It is a bad sign: a chill winter: dangerous:
At this season they fly high-up and in silence:

Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) Conquistador (1932), Ninth Book
from Complete Poems, 1917-1982, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1985
p. 231, lines 1-3, 10-12

108)

9:11 in e. e. cummings's Tulips love walking in the grass:

when god lets my body be

From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passions wastes

will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow

Into strenous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with their face
and all the while shall my heart be

With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea

e. e. cummings (1894-1962),
Tulips (1922), from Complete Poems
Edited by George J. Firmage, Liveright, NY, 1991, p. 19
More Cummings Poems #9

109)

9:11 Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls:

They stood in the mouth of the cave and watched them. The
bombers wre high now in fast, ugly arrow-heads beating the sky
apart with the noise of their motors. They are shaped like sharks,
They move like mechanized / doom.
She was looking up and he
said to her, "What do they look like to you, guapa?
"I don't know," she said. "Death, I think."

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Chapter 9
Scribner's, New York, 1940, p. 87, lines 1-3, 7-8, 10-12

110)

9/11/1976 in Helen Luke's "A Diary of Vowels": "attend to God's voice"

What is the "vowel" for this day?... Simone Weil said that real education
is the awakening and training of the faculty of attention, ultimately so that
we may attend to the voice of the living God. So many words, so much and
always more to be packed into each week, and the attention is fragmented
so that nothing can be heard but the "consonants." Even here in our quiet life,
that noisy emptiness invades— and I then affirm things with talk and with
arbitrary opinions springing from the demand for prestige. Well, the truth,
however humiliating, must be welcomed.
Helen Luke (1904-1995), Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On,
September 11, 1976 (Apple Farm, Three Rivers, Michigan)
Parabola Books, Bell Tower, NY, 2000, pp. 125-126

111)

9:11 in George Oppen's Of Being Numerous: "unearthly bonds"

'Whether, as the intensity of seeing increases, one's distance
from Them, the people, does not also increase'
I know, of course I know, I can enter on other place

Yet I am one of those who from nothing but man's way of
thought and one of his dialects and what has happened
to me
Have made poetry

To dream of that beach
For the sake of an instant in the eyes

The absolute singular

The unearthly bonds
Of the singular

Which is the bright light of shipwreck

George Oppen (1908-1984),
Of Being Numerous (1968), 9.1-13
from Of Being Numerous, New Directions, NY, 1968, p. 14

112)

9:11 in Muriel Rukeyser's Nine Poems fro the unborn child: "dark lake"

Rider of dream, the body as an image
Alone in crisis. I have seen the wind,
Its tall cloud standing on a pillar of air,
The toe of the whirlwing turning on the ground.
have known in myself hollow bodiless shade,
The shadow falling from the tree to the ground,
Have known in myself hollow bodiless shade,
The shadow falling from the tree to the ground,
Have lost and lost and now at last am found
For a moment of sleep and waking, striking root.

Praise that the homeless may in their bodies be
A house that time makes, where the future moves
In his dark lake. Praise that the cities of men,
The fields of men, may at all moments choose.
Lose, use, and live. And at this daylight, praise
To the grace of the world and time that I may hope
To live, to write, to see my human child.

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980),
Nine Poems for the Unborn Child (1968), IX.1-15
from The Green Wave, (1948); Collected Poems, p. 287

113)

9:11 in Denise Levertov's Growth of a Poet: "on that day alone, the rocking"
Hassidic rocking
is always back and forth,
back and forth,
in perfect measure with the words,
over and over,
every day of the year—

except one:
on the day the Temple is destroyed
which is also
the day the Messiah is born,
on that day alone, the rocking
moves from side to side,
side to side,
a swaying,
as trees sway in the wind.

Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Growth of a Poet (1971), IX.1-15
from Denise Levertov, The Freeing of the Dust, New Directions, NY, 1975
Interview by Nicholas O'Connell; Denise Levertov: Work that enfaiths

114)

9:11 in John Logan's The Piano Scholar: "an orchestral piece"

In my senior year at school I remember
my piano teacher, Miss Schram,
once played for me with swollen arthritic hands
a few thumbs-crossed-over notes of a Schumann Romance,
and I sensed that day I was peculiarly blest.
It was mainly for Miss Schram, with whom I fell in love,
I outdid myself in the school's final recital:
played the slow movement of the
F# Minor Piano Sonata Johannes Brahms
had written at twenty.
It is very rich and reads like an orchestral piece.
I was also only twenty and jealous of him—
no, that's not quite the word, for his music made me feel
I must somehow find a way to change my very life.
It's not an easy piece; even in the andante
there are seven notes on one hand.
Don't ask me how I did it,
but my fulfillment came when my beloved Miss Schram
moved back to the loges,
where the recitalists mingles,
and said to me, "Jack, that was simply gorgeous!"

Mt. Vernon, Washington, February 22, 1981

John Logan (1923-1997), The Piano Scholar (1981), Section 9
Manhattan Movements: Poems 1981-1987
The Collected Poems BOA Editions, Brockport, NY, 1989, pp. 440-441

115)

9:11 in Kenneth Koch's Our Hearts: "we get wiser, kinder"
To be a back, which doesn't break, and to hate what is mysterious
That doesn't need to be, grant me O Athena
Of the roses and the gamma globulin— however, prayer
Is nothing I can ever be serious about (I think).
The answer is elusive and the work about it goes on
A long time and so we want our lives to go on
Among other things in hope to find an answer. Though we know
That the answer of eighty will not be the answer of eighteen.
En route we give titles to things, we further
Complicate our own situation and that of other persons
And we get wiser, sometimes, and kinder, and probably less exciting
(Certainly so), and grow out of our illusions (sometimes) and so
Can look around and say, Oh! So! but usually without the time
Or power to change anything (sometimes— maybe a fraction—
if so, it's amazing!) then off we go.

Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), Our Hearts (1979), 9.1-15
from The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951, Random House, NY, 1979
Interview by Anne Waldman; Interview by David Kennedy; NY Times Obituary (7-7-2002)

116)

9:11 in Galway Kinnell's When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone: "covets the stillness"
When one has lived a long time alone,
sour, misanthropic, one fits to one's defiance
the satanic boast, It is better to reign
in hell than to submit on earth, and forget
one's kind— the way by now the snake does,
who stops trying to get to the floor and lingers
all across one's body, slumping into its contours,
adopting its temperature— and abandons hope
of the sweetness of friendship or love,
before long can barely remember what they are,
and covets the stillness in inorganic matter,
in a self-dissolution one may not know how to halt,
when one has lived a long time alone.

Galway Kinnell (born 1927), When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone (1990), 9.1-13
from When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone, Knopf, NY, 1990, p. 67
Interview by Daniela Gioseffi; Interview by Elizabeth Lund

117)

9:11 in Philip Levine's Pili's Wall (1971): "warmed"
Today I am
the wall, but once
I was seed

huddling between the grains
of stones, drawing a tongue

of salt into my blood, a fist
tightening into
a turnip

with one hard eye, until
a point of light
warmed

and gathering broke the dried crust
I was, and I was into
the air

the stiff back of me humping and
I breathed in
the green morning

like a row of windless corn
never to be
eaten

Philip Levine (born 1928), Pili's Wall (1971), IX.1-20
from Philip Levine, Selected Poems, Atheneum, NY, 1984, pp. 59-66
Interview by Diane Osen; Interview by Wen Stephenson

118)

9:11 in Adrienne Rich's Sleepwalking Next to Death: "long night & bleeding"
The practical nurse is the only nurse
with her plastic valise of poultices and salves
her hands of glove leather and ebony
her ledgers of pain
The practical nurse goes down to the river
in her runover shoes and her dollar necklace
eating a burrito in hand
it will be a long day
a long labor
the midwife will be glad to see her
it will be a long night someone bleeding
from a botched abortion a beating
Will you let her touch you now?
Will you tell her you're fine?

Adrienne Rich (born 1929), Sleepwalking Next to Death (1987), IX.1-14
from Adrienne Rich, Time's Power, Norton, NY, 1989
Interview by Matthew Rothschild; Adrienne Rich, "Credo of a Passionate Skeptic"

119)

9/11 images in Mary Oliver's Storm in Massachusetts, September 1982
(a Metonic cycle prophecy for New York, 9/11/2001 ?)

A hot day,
a clear heaven— then
clouds bulge
over the horizon

and the wind turns
like a hundred black swans
and the first faint noise
begins

I think
of my good life,
I think
of other lives

being blown apart
in field after distant field.
All over the world—
I'm sure of it—

life is much the same
when it's going well—
resonant
and unremarkable.

But who,
not under disaster's seal,
can understand what life is like
when it begins to crumble?

Now the noise is bulbous,
dense, drumming
over the hills,
and approaching

So safe,
so blank of imagination,
so deadly of heart,
I listen

to those dropped and rolling
rounds of thunder.
They only sound
like gunfire.

Mary Oliver (born 1935)
Storm in Massachusetts, September 1982 IX.1-36)
Dream Work, Atlantic Monthly Press, Boston, 1986, pp. 71-72
Interview by Steven Ratiner (Dec. 9, 1992)

120)

9:11 in Robert Hass's Palo Alto: The Marshes "shrill in the distance":

A chill tightens the skin
around my bones. The other California
and its bitter absent ghosts
dance to a stillness in the air:
the Klamath tribe was routed and they disappeared.
Even the dust seemed stunned,
tools on the ground, fishnets.
Fire crackled, smouldering.
No movement but the slow turning
of the smoke, no sound but jays
shrill in the distance and flying further off.
The flicker of lizards, dragonflies.

Robert Hass (born 1941), Palo Alto: The Marshes (1979), 9.1-12
from Field Guide, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973, p. 26 Interview

121)

Stanzas 9 & 11 in Robert Hass's The Beginning of September:
IX
The inside of peaches
are the color of sunrise

The outside of plums
are the color of dusk

XI
She thought it was a good idea.
He had his doubts.

Robert Hass (born 1941), The Beginning of September (1979), IX, XI
from Praise, Echo Press, NY, 1979, pp. 39, 40. Interview

122)

Stanza 9, Line 11 in Galway Kinnell's When the Towers Fell: "too gruesome... to breathe"

Burst jet fuel, incinerated aluminum, steel fume, crushed marble, exploded
granite, pulverized drywall, mashed concrete, berserked plastic,
gasified mercury, cracked chemicals, scoria, vapor
of the vaporize— wafted here
from the burnings of the past, draped over
our island up to streets regimented
into numbers and letters, breathed across
the great bridges to Brooklyn and the waiting sea:
astringent, miasmic, empyreumatic, slick,
freighted air too foul to take in but we take it in,
too gruesome for seekers of the amnesiac beloved
to breathe but they breathe it and you breathe it.

Galway Kinnell (born 1927), When the Towers Fell (2002), 9.1-13
Complete Poem in The New Yorker (9-16-2002);
Interview by Alice Quinn about the poem.