For the first time since that morning in September, we returned yesterday to the corner of Church and Vesey Sts., across from the ruins of the World Trade Center.

For a long moment, we stared at the empty place where we saw human beings, tiny in the distance, tumbling a thousand feet that morning to certain death. My wife shook her head and turned away. We never did learn the names of those who chose one terrible death over another. Their names have found decent burial among the lists of the dead, but images of the way they died will be part of us for the rest of our lives.

We found the spot on Vesey St. where we were standing when one policeman shut off a cellular phone and told another that the Pentagon had been hit, too. This was next to a coffee shop called the Stage Door Deli, which that morning was hidden behind a fence of rigging. In the gutter that morning was a woman's lone shoe, a cheese Danish in a cellophane wrapper, an unopened bottle of V8 Splash and a puddle of congealing blood.

All were gone yesterday morning, of course, the street planked and covered, hidden behind a temporary fence. That morning, there was an airplane wheel in the middle of the street, too, and another around the corner on Church St., and pieces of jagged steel guarded by FBI men. All identified by yellow crime scene tape. Gone now, too.

There was the spot where each of us stood, 6 or 8 feet apart, when the unimaginable happened. We were watching two amazing fires on the high floors of the twin towers, filled with angry orange flame and billowing black smoke. It never occurred to us — or to the police and firefighters and emergency workers — that the buildings themselves would come down. And then there were pops, small explosions, and the upper floors of the south tower made a cracking sound, bent forward toward Church St. and Century 21 and the Millenium Hilton hotel, then righted themselves, and came down with amazing pulverizing power and speed, to be followed almost instantly by The Cloud.

Emerged Into Spooky World

So here, yesterday, was the exact spot when we were engulfed by that ferocious 25-story-high mixture of dust, ash and death, that opaque cloud that seemed like a solid, that cloud that erased the horizon, and froze time.

We did not dream this.

Here a policeman grabbed my wife and rushed her to Broadway. There was the doorway at 20 Vesey St. where I was hurled into the lobby with some firemen, cops, a photographer, and separated from my wife. Here were the doors — two of them, though I remembered only one — that were locked behind us and then smashed with an ax 14 minutes later to allow us out into the spooky white world.

We had not been back to this section of New York street since that morning. The street was blocked for 20 weeks, deep in the frozen zone, off-limits to all. Now, at last, we could see it — see clearly the void where the towers once stood (which we had glimpsed from other places), see the great leveled space, remember the horror and the surprise, and stand on the sidewalk where luck, and a few good cops, kept us alive.

For a long while yesterday, we simply stood there, saying nothing to each other and everything. One immense red crane slashed across the empty sky, pointing south. Other cranes were immobile down near West St. A protective canvas on the gabled roof of a Liberty St. building bulged and sighed in the wind off the harbor. We could hear the thrumming of unseen generators. Steam escaped from sidewalk vents. American flags flapped and curled.

Then an airliner suddenly appeared, heading north along the river, and through a trick of perspective seemed aimed at one of the surviving buildings beyond West St. My wife gasped. My heart stuttered. And then, a second later, the jet appeared again, moving to a safe port. It was time to go.

Performing Works of Mercy

We stopped for a while in St. Peter's Church on Barclay St., the oldest Catholic church in New York State, to which the Rev. Mychal Judge, the Fire Department chaplain, was brought that morning for last rites. The church was empty when we visited, but the dust and ash of Sept. 11 had long been cleaned. A woman came in to light a candle. The church had been there during 19th century epidemics of cholera and smallpox, through depressions and wars, urging its parishioners to perform spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Not simply for Catholics; for everyone in need. In the weeks after the calamity, St. Peter's did not shirk its ancient mission. Yesterday, the gift of human mercy still lived in its air.

Then we walked up Church St., past some shops that had closed for good, toward a building where we had once lived. There were very few people in the streets for it was, after all, Sunday morning, and there was no traffic. A work crew was digging trenches in Murray St. Large signs offered apartments for sale. The shops of our friends were shuttered. Mr. Lee, who runs the deli at the corner of Chambers St., was off for the day. We gazed up at the apartment where we had lived, but there were no signs of life.

Sounds Like Sighs of Ghosts

And yet the morning in that wounded neighborhood still seemed more about life than death. There was the Vietnamese couple, open for business at Warren St., selling luggage and caps. There was the Imperial Coffee Shop with customers at the counter, eating Danish and coffee and eggs and reading newspapers. There were surely people talking about the Super Bowl. And about grandchildren. And about the exact date of pitchers and catchers. And even about Enron. The lovely invincible chatter of a Sunday morning in New York.

At Chambers St., we stopped and looked back. The sky was empty and blue. The cranes looked like the lances of toy soldiers. The wind combed through some rigging, making a sound like the sighing of ghosts.

We talked about how we wouldn't have to go down there again until something green and marvelous and human rises triumphantly from the ashes.

Then we held hands and crossed the street, heading for home.