The View From the 25th Floor

Unusual in this modern world
My skyscraper
Sits right across the street
From a Cathedral.

My windows overlook
The carved stone walls and the slate roofs
Of Saint Patrick’s
Spread out
Cross-shaped
Two hundred feet below

But straight across from me
It’s mostly empty space.
My only companions
Two weathered green crosses
Each firmly fixed
To the tip of a spire.

Sometime I think
A pane of glass
And a little bit of air
Are all that separate me
From two watchers
From another world.
Two green sentinels
Stationed on two gray peaks,
Calmly observing
Our life below

But since my sentinels never move,
And certainly never speak
I usually ignore them
And look straight down
At the street below.

On an ordinary day
The sidewalk, 25 stories down,
Bristles with determined shoppers,
While platoons of cars
Descending 5th Avenue
Only make progress
By dodging in and out
Between Yellow Cabs
And big silver buses.

Because my graceful old building
Has windows that actually open
I can hear unfiltered
The sound
Of an ordinary day
A low cheerful roar
Without much pattern.

But today is not ordinary
In fact
This fall
Most ordinary days
Have been cancelled.

Today
Every stone
Of Saint Patrick’s
Is hard at work
Helping the living
To deal with the dead

The Avenue is closed,
There are no cars, no shoppers
Instead
A thousand Firemen in Blue
Stand in three lines
Facing the Cathedral.

Today
No shapeless cheerful sounds
Come through the open windows
Instead I hear
The sharp and painful clarity
Of military commands
And see
The stiff ordered motions
That accompany a flag-draped casket
Into the church.

Rank after Rank of Blue follows
Then the great doors close behind them. First
There is silence, Then
Loudspeakers broadcast
The pain within
To the silent street.

A column of long black cars
Their slow movements
Now smoothed by practice
Arrives and waits.
They wait,
Motionless and ready,
Until the loudspeakers
Speak their last consolations
And the last hymn is heard

The Cathedral doors open,
Slowly
In small knots
The mourners emerge.
Moving hesitantly,
Unwilling, they fill the long black cars,
A bagpipe band falls in behind.

At a walking pace, and
To the sad sound of the bagpipes
The procession starts.

After two slow painful blocks
Comes the moment of separation.
The bagpipers stop and turn back,
The long black column of cars
Goes on
Straight down the Avenue
Gathering speed
Growing smaller
Departing from us all
Like the final stage of some giant rocket
Leaving Earth
For a new and far off orbit.

In front of the Cathedral
The Blue of the Firemen
Starts to melt
Into the returning crowd.
The bagpipers have disappeared
Altogether.

Soon, all is as it was.
Once more
Shoppers fill the sidewalks
Cars dodge in and out
The Cabs are as Yellow as before,

Opposite the 25th floor
My two green sentinels
Are still there.
Fixed in their positions
Never moving, never speaking,
Always appearing to have seen
Nothing at all.