Filling a hole in the sky

They're filling a hole in the sky over lower Manhattan. Where once stood the massive twin peaks of the World Trade Centre, 10 cranes labour away laying the steel for One World Trade Center, and excavating an even deeper adjacent hole to build the monument in memory of those who died at Ground Zero.

It's a searingly hot July day and the sidewalks are filled with tourists--mostly families--some here to remember and pay their respects and others out of morbid curiosity. I am here, I confess, for both reasons--and more.

I first visited New York City in 1998 with two friends after becoming convinced that there was something amiss, in a life lived for 45 years merely two hours by air from the cultural capital of modern western civilization, with never having visited it. One of my companions pushed hard to tour the World Trade Center, but being short on time, we eventually agreed on "next time". We all know how that worked out. So, I am also visiting to honour that commitment.

I am a firm believer in the reality behind the idea of "hallowed ground". I have experienced it in places as diverse as Chichen Itza and the Vietnam War Memorial. We sit in the shade of a pocket park just north of Ground Zero. A fountain, which surrounds an amazing intensely fuschia-coloured Jeff Koons sculpture, masks the sound of both the crowds and the construction.

I try not to think of the words of Ecclesiastes, the preacher, "All is vanity...". Instead, the lyrics of singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, written days after 9/11, and heard the evening before, come back to haunt me:

"There will always be stop and go
And fast and slow
And action, reaction;
Sticks and stones and broken bones,
Those for peace and those for war,
And God bless these ones, not those ones but these ones.
In times like these.