My dear America,
Every September I hear you breathing heavily,
Like a city holding its heart in its hands
And not knowing whether to cry
Or be silent.

The day gathers around the date,
The 11th falls like a long shadow,
And September 9 opens the way,
The ninth month beats like a clock
That never forgets.

I am here, in Sweden,
Where autumn comes quietly,
But inside me rises again that smoke
That I first saw
With frozen eyes on the television,
When the world broke
And America became a prayer.

Lord,
Give peace to America,
For every autumn bell
Bear its name.

And we, the departed,
We carry it like a luminous wound,
Like a photograph burned at the edges,
Like a road that never ends.

My dear America,
today I call you softly,
from Stockholm,
from the cold air,
from my heart that still holds you:
to be at peace,
to be in the light,
to be whole.

Poem – September 9, the ninth month
September 9 presses down on the sky again,
nine times the light breaks,
America trembles in the thin air,
and the day in Sweden resembles
then —
when I was running from the neighborhood,
leaving the washing machine to spin by itself
its noise of the normal world,
and at home, on television,
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Lord,
give peace to America,
because every autumn
the same wound of smoke opens,
the same echo of falling buildings,
the same silence that cries out.

And we, the departed,
those who have learned to breathe another air,
carry within us two countries:
one of northern ice,
and one of unquenchable fire.

Today, the month of September strikes nine times,
like a bell that never forgets.
And I stop,
in my quiet Stockholm,
and say softly:
Lord, give peace to America.