To The Gate Of Heaven

To The Gate Of Heaven:  Part One

Saxon Woods Park is located within what was, until 1823, the Old Eastern Settlement of White Plains. It contains a small but significant acreage of primeval forest, and provides a range of recreational amenities, including trails, a standard and miniature golf course,and the largest swimming pool in Westchester.

       Welcome to White Plains!

       Westchester Chamber of Commerce, 1952

I

From here to The Gate Of Heaven

Is a distance of just over twenty-nine miles.

The journey takes forty-one minutes in a car;

Thirty-seven, if there’s no traffic on the road.

But there’s always traffic on the road, unless you go

At dead of night. And no one makes that journey

At dead of night.

                               Go west down Fifty-Seventh Street

And make a right on to the West Side Highway,

Which is also State Route 9A and, since nineteen ninety-nine,

The Joe DiMaggio Highway, in commemoration

Of the Yankee Clipper—which, not surprisingly enough,

Provoked sharp controversy in its time.

But Giuliani saw to it that everything always

Provoked sharp controversy.

                                                You really should

Encounter no delays between Fifty-Ninth

And Seventy-Second Street—there are no entrances

Or exits—but if by some mischance you do,

Don’t look to your right. If you’re held in traffic,

Look left across the river at New Jersey.

Practice saying “Hoboken”. Locate it

On the Hudson Waterfront. Frank Sinatra

Was born and raised in Hoboken—so sing;

Sing and wait and don’t look right. That way

You might not have to gaze upon Trump Place.

Between Fifty-Ninth and Seventy-Second Street

The fourteen ugliest buildings in New York

Stare across the Hudson at Hoboken

—and Hoboken glares back with Sinatra’s baleful glare

That says “You’re all dead men” and means it too.

These comprise Trump Place, South Riverside,

A zone of hell designed to indicate

Where Donald Trump stands on the Upper West Side.

Most of them are twelve years old, or less,

And the most recent, Number 50 Riverside

Boulevard, was finished—or finished being built—

Three years ago.

                              Its defiant gaze of incompletion,

The pride it takes in lacking something vital

Exemplifies the Trump aesthetic in action,

In fact this building is the Trump aesthetic

In its perfected form.

II

                                             Buildings occupy land;

Even the greatest of them is confined

To the dimensions of the plot it occupies.

The greatest builder must confine himself

To what is possible and create internal space

Only as it can be sold and occupied.

Ambition, even as it dreams, must comply

With the demands of time and available space

And its creations must be here and now.

History must flow without impediment

Along its corridors and through its rooms

And up and down its stairs from floor to floor.

With time and luck, here and now will speak

With the authority of there and then, their clarity

Enhanced by the invention of perspective,

And enable eyes undimmed by fear to see

Beauty.

                 No serious builder really wants

To occupy the spaces he creates.

The thought of making room for the detritus

Of the shadow-life that occupies the vacancies in time

Created by his absences disgusts him.

(The owner of the shadow-life is afraid

To die in obscurity, however decent.

He covets space and wants to be a king

And live in lots of palaces at once

And when he dies he wants to haunt them all.

So he piles up all the possessions that identify him

Into a mountain of circumstantial evidence

And generates a mighty torrent of waste.)

A serious builder makes homes for lost children:

Forlorn hopes that cry out for his help

—even though they don’t know who he is

Or what they need, or what he can provide.

They haven’t lived and wouldn’t recognise

Help, even if it came in the shape

Of Florence Nightingale. How could they know?

Who’s Florence Nightingale to them, or they

To Florence Nightingale? How can they tell

The unfamiliar healer’s gentle touch

From the unfamiliar gentle touch of the hand

That means to squeeze the life from them, like toothpaste,

Before they have a chance to understand

What life, or its denial, is, or was?

And yet it is to him that they appeal

And he responds; provides, accommodates

And nurtures, knows what each idea requires

To live and thrive: a home: a structure unique to each,

To support, affirm, protect, make space to grow,

Determine shape without determined force

Or force of expectation.

III

                                          The lost child, who becomes,

With time and care, the man well-dressed,

(“The Well-Dressed Man” or “Aaron” from this point);

Embodies purpose, clarity of intent,

Service without envy, love without end or dread,

Thought in action, the immanence of truth.

But to know the world’s perfection, he must accept

(And so must we when we are put to it)

The world’s perfection as a fact before

It can be known.

                             He adopts a blindfold

In recognition of our unpaid debt to chance

And to acknowledge its unsung contribution

To pattern recognition.

                                        The Well-Dressed Man

Prepares for his encounter with perfection

By remembering precisely how the builder

(Call him “The Builder”, or “Malahide”) took the news

That he was going to die.

                                            He took it well,

Made light of it, quoted Hamlet. Admirers observed,

In a way that made their judgment look mature,

That he was “behaving splendidly”;

“Malahide is showing extraordinary grace under pressure.”

Their generosity of spirit bloomed

In the radiance of his brave example.

When death (“Death”) fell in behind him, Malahide

Called him close and welcomed his company.

Death was at first wary of the warmth

Of Malahide’s embrace and Malahide

Recognised, not without sadness, that Death’s

Misgivings were well-grounded in bitter experience.

People didn’t like him—this was a fact

That Death had learned to expect, if not accept.

But Death liked people, admired them, found them

Funny and often moving. Lots of them

Believed in immortality of some sort

And some of them amazed him with their faith:

Their sure and certain hope of resurrection

To eternal life. Death yearned for an opportunity

To ask them what it meant. Where was the consolation?

He knew he’d never get a chance to ask.

But if they found consolation in the words,

Why not him too? Could Death not be consoled?

He wondered why they never talked to him.

What had he done? Why were they afraid?

Their lives were hard and if they really thought

Things would get better once they were dead,

Why treat him like their mortal enemy?

He bore them no ill-will and always bore

The brunt of theirs with equanimity,

Forbearance and the constant hope, undimmed

By all he’d suffered, that one day

One of them would want to be his friend.

But he received no kindness, encountered no goodwill

—except from suicides and that growing few

Whose fear of pain and age encouraged them

To end their lives, in the belief that death

Would end their suffering.

    Death felt their pain.

He knew how such an error could occur

And wished he could correct it before they made it.

But even they refused to let him near them.

Even they believed he meant them harm.

But with curious reluctance, Death could see

That Malahide was different. He had no fear of Death

And saw in Death’s persistent thankless efforts

To befriend the living a generous heart,

True warmth and a will to sacrifice—

Evidence of unacknowledged virtue.

He would seek to know it, emulate

It, relish it, absorb its radiance

Before he died.

                           But, more than all this,

Malahide had found a friend in Death

And Death had found a friend in Malahide.

IV

Death took his place alongside Malahide,

Relished his trust and trusted his affection.

They walked arm-in-arm until the day came

When The Builder could no longer walk.

It was his time to seek The Gate Of Heaven

And Death took him in his arms.

                                                       Their laughter

Chilled everyone to the bone. Malahide’s

Admirers were no longer taken in

By the monstrous thing that they’d mistaken

For courage.

                        Courage knows fear, respects danger

And yields with honour to the inevitable.

But Malahide was unafraid. He was without fear

And therefore without courage. He showed contempt

For events with outcomes outside his control

(These included but were not confined

To battles, famines, horseraces and love);

For functions and conditions unresponsive

To his influence and stated preferences

(Weather, pi, the law, the price of gold);

And for facts with no regard for his consent

(A measured mile, the Rings of Saturn, death).

They recognized his deep insouciance

For what it was: a denial of good faith.

It was no brave disguise, but, as it were,

A whitewashed manhole-cover that gave access

To an obscure chasm of unknowable provenance

Through which the River of Insouciance

Flowed slowly in great darkness underground

Towards an insouciant ocean, as yet uncharted.

Aaron resented Death’s familiarity

With the man he’d never summoned up the nerve

To call father.

                        He remembers when The Builder

Called him in to say a brief goodbye,

As if he were off to Bognor for the weekend.

Death occupied a chair beside the bed,

Dressed satirically in heavy tweeds,

With cap and goggles and a travelling rug.

His reassuring smile and silver hipflask

Were clearly intended to inspire

Confidence and to indicate contempt.

They seemed to say “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care

Of him!” They said “Fuck off!”

                                                       Aaron waits

And plays the scene back in his head. He recalls

The pain, the silence. Here it is again.

He couldn’t speak, but can recall precisely

What came out of him instead of words:

Breath alone conveyed the surge of longing—

Conveyed the special sound that longing makes

When, after years of sacrifice, it must face

The sudden loss of what it never had

(As a weary sledge-dog may suddenly look up

And pluck the scent of truth out of the air

Like a snowflake from the wind that moves in time

Beside the sled and its freight of sleeping passengers:

This is a journey of a different kind,

With a different kind of end. Be satisfied.)

The consolation of denial is lost;

Fidelity to a dream of love denied,

Made precious by denial and strong by hope:

A promise endlessly renewed, never

Unfulfilled:

                    The special sound for this

Is a rapid fluttering of wings behind the throat

Where a kestrel hovers on your breath,

Pausing to take its bearings, draw a bead on its prey,

Reduce the rich geometry of interspatial relations

Between moving entities to an algebra

Of two, with which it calculates the path

Of an object that accelerates in its descent

With a dogged, fast precision that suggests

It isn’t falling but flying.

                                          If he were alive, The Builder

Would wonder what the special sound was for.

He’d take the necessary metaphor

For a literal function—despite his mastery

Of the stupendous scale and vast complexity

Of the engineering it requires

Even to imagine such a thing,

Malahide wasn’t Dante. He accepted

His limitations with good grace. He died

As he built, in the reasonable expectation

Of an enduring residence in the fabric

Of his buildings.

                               Like all ambitious builders

He worked only with the best materials.

He meant his work to last.

                                              So Malahide will live on

In the artifice of semi-permanence,

In bricks and mortar, stone and glass and steel—

As long as their integrity is maintained;

As long as they’re necessary and in good repair.

V

50 Riverside Boulevard provokes unease.

The word that best describes it is “uncanny”.

Trump’s work can be relied on to provoke

A negative response: anger, outrage,

Dislike, displeasure, mockery, contempt,

But this is something else. There’s rigour here.

The shoddiness of the materials

Displays a recklessness beyond belief.

The grimly ostentatious lack of care

With which defective elements are assembled

Adds conviction to the overall impression

Of abandonment, rather than completion.

And Trump’s robust commitment to neglect

Asserts its baleful influence most clearly

In his trademark disdain for routine maintenance.

The deepening patina of filth emphasizes

The featureless flat plane of the façade

With its glum scatter of things that need to be

Repaired, replaced, removed, improved or done.

The dirt and the thriving rash of trouble-spots

Bring a strong suggestion of disease

To the building’s prurient air of stern rebuke,

But do nothing to conceal its dreadful nakedness

Or to undermine its mad belief

That it was built to drive men mad with lust.

Compelled by duty and perverse desire

To be exposed at all times to men’s eyes,

It lives to satisfy the need to see,

The urge to show.

                               50 Riverside

Is without shame; it is the absence of shame

Made manifest in the shoddiest materials

Available to man.

                                      The rash will spread

Like a tsunami and tear into the fabric

Of the building. All the jobs neglected, the repairs

Undone, will disappear. The nakedness

That thrilled the building into a disgusting frenzy

And cast a spell of dread on all who witnessed it,

Will be at last concealed and then consumed

Under a seething carapace of decay.

Donald Trump is sixty-nine years old

And every building’s shoddier than the last.

Buildings that collapse are nothing new.

Like babies who can’t stand up, but can’t stop trying,

His early efforts often hit the ground

With a cheerful thud.

      Defective concrete,

Bricks like burnt toast, mortar with all the virtue

Of cream cheese, unerring faith in luck and money

Saved, the urge to carry on regardless

Of danger and improvise solutions

On the hoof—these are things you’d find

On every building site that’s ever borne his name.

But 50 Riverside takes it, as Trump remarks,

To a whole other level.

                                      Trump the builder

Is proud of his ability to busk

Corrections to a building if it drifts

From true, and starts to crack and stoop

Towards the earth, as if in anticipation

Of its collapse—which, in the case of 50 Riverside,

He delayed by elevating the side that sagged

With a hastily constructed splint, built

Not to last from dunnage never meant

To bear weight and boshing in the cracks

With a flimsy clunch made out of unwashed sand

From South Beach, Staten Island, mixed

With garbage, polyunsaturated and decompressed

And held together with the gooey toxic waste

That’s produced in vast (illegal) quantities

When deep industrial sumpage is conducted

On a massive scale.

                                      But don’t be fooled.

This opulence of  unsound practices,

This joy derived from using useless stuff,

This preference for what is bound to fail

—None of this is down to laziness

Or ignorance or inattention to detail.

This kind of work on this enormous scale,

Requires a rare contempt for human life,

A loathing for the world and everything

It’s ever been, is now and can ever be,

A denial of all value, a total absence

From one’s place in time—or from the place

In time that one was meant to occupy—

And the energy to turn all these into action.

Everything that Trump has ever made

Betrays its maker’s morbid fear of being outlived

By his own creations.

                                          Don’t be misled

By the name ‘Trump’ emblazoned over

Everything he builds. He builds for fame,

But only mortal—not eternal—fame.

He believes that when he dies the world will end

Like a TV show when he turns the TV off.

He likes to think that when the TV set

Goes dark, his death will erase everything

Ever broadcast, the memory of everything

Ever broadcast, the history of broadcasting,

The invention of TV, all published works,

All thought, all human life.

                                               He wants his death

To make the universe incapable

Of sustaining life—no, he wants more:  a universe

That could never even have witnessed

Life in any form, even from a distance:

Barren from the start—a yearning dream

Of perfect vacancy, fulfilled and unconfined.

He’ll die content, knowing that when he dies

The sky will be swept clear of all the stars,

Solar systems, galaxies and planets

That preexisted him—and, more emphatically,

Of everything that threatens to go on

Spinning, shining, orbiting or remaining fixed

After his death.

                            His real ambition is

To leave a black hole behind him. The irony

Makes him smile. Legacy is something

He denies—so how could coveted oblivion

Bear to imagine any conscious entity

Surviving and attributing to him

Something of which he’d be eternally

Unaware? But how can he deny

His unfamiliar pleasure at the thought

Of discovering that his name had been attached

To a black hole?

                                You can stare for hours

At the windows at the front and not know

What urges you to panic, vomit, flee,

As from some vile anomaly in nature.

Something’s terribly wrong—that’s all you know

And all you need to know. If someone could explain

Why the windows look like rows of empty sockets

From which the eyes have been removed, the horror

Would remain. This is the Trump aesthetic

In its perfected form.

VI

Last year I bet my wife a ruby ring

Against a pair of anaconda boots

That sometime in the next fourteen years

The City would issue an administrative ordinance

And raze them all to the ground—and if I don’t pass

Through the Gate of Heaven before I get the chance,

I reckon I’ll collect my fancy boots

Long before twenty-twenty-nine—and now

That Donald Trump’s decided to devote

His twilight years to becoming, as it were,

The Outcast of the Universe, I may well

Have them in time for Christmas.

                                                     And I’m sure

Trump Place won’t be the only casualty.

I’d like to see an angry mob burn down

Trump Tower. I’d like to see the world unite

In condemning the abomination that is

The Trump World Tower on United Nations Plaza.

And I would be quite happy to blow up

The Trump International Hotel and Tower

On Columbus Circle.

                                  But, with luck, and since

No entrances or exits interrupt

The flow of traffic, it should be possible

To go from Fifty-Ninth to Seventy-Second Street

Without delay.

                          At Seventy-Second Street

No one seems to notice the discreet

(And discreetly undisputed) change of name:

The Henry Hudson Parkway grabs the baton

And carries it the length of Riverside Park—

Four slender miles of decorative lawns

And discreet cynosures all the way

Through Harlem and—

                                           I’ll pause there. Some advice:

Beware mudslides if you decide to pick up speed

In the shelter of Morningside Heights to steal a march

On death.

                  Be of good heart, take solace!

There is a blessing in the falling mist

That settles on the honest penitent;

That issues from the true ekklesia,

The church within a church that also waits

Within the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine,

High above the Henry Hudson Parkway:

It is the living hope of all the world.