They could have built some low-cost housing
but they built the Hudson Yards instead
on twenty-eight reclaimed acres
in the West 30s of Manhattan,
and on the plaza in the center
where the consortium of architects
had erected, with massive subsidies
of public money,
sharp-angled corporate glass and steel
they could have placed a fountain
cascading water
that people gathered round
threw pennies in
made silly wishes
had their lunch
stilled their minds
with soothing sounds of spray
but instead they built the Vessel
as it’s known
a set of staircases going nowhere
which if you had no other evidence
of the decline of civilization
would be enough to rest your case—
“No more witnesses your honor.”
There it looms
a hulking monstrosity
where a gracefully tiered fountain
would have granted some relief
from the city’s throb and din.

We found our way to CNN
and went through tight security
for the show
with the candidate for president.
They told us smile
for the camera
clap when we tell you
look good you never know
if there’s a scout out there
and if we weren’t worried before
about where we’re headed
we worried plenty now that
we were right there on the set.

Once I drove a philosopher
from his house to an event
some few miles away.
Old and renowned,
he’d studied as a youth
with Heidegger
and was now a hero to the young.
and there he was sitting
in my Plymouth
speaking from a deep place
in perfectly formed paragraphs
I asked him
(I was a sophomore and it showed)
Weren’t things getting better?
This was around the beginning
of when they’d
started to get worse,
even though the Vessel
was still years away.
He smiled and said
in his charming accented English
“Are you mad?”
And down the many years
those three words
have conferred on me
protection from the TV show
I didn’t know we’d all be living in,
and from the cold and shiny metal
of the Vessel,
and the void
where the fountain should have been.