It is cavernous and uninhabited, New York.
The dust in the air and the fragments of stiff paper and glass settled and are still.
The wind doesn't blow through the troughs of skyscraper ruins and streets like a torrent or a gale.
The ocean waves crash distantly and echo through the whispering haze and the empty walls that are simultaneously austere.
The ocean is a dead ocean.
New York is empty and brightly colored by glittering cellophane and plastic things.
And they, like everything, have faded into relative gray.
The ground doesn't tremble in its foundations or move triumphantly because it is ground, and ground doesn't move.
A noiseless call thunders depressively across the landscape and reaches out into another space, a living space, groping mindlessly at everything else.
And then everything stops, breathless and warm.
And this is the ascension, which is dull and never brilliant like diamonds.
And New York wails into the air and the ocean.
There isn't a lesson to learn from this. There never was.