Friday, November 14, 2008

Enderby writes

Over on Thought Experiments I was challenged by a passer-by to write some verse about the broke bankers. I intended to do something in the sort of ‘torrent of doggerel’ style of The Art Snobs or Gymnasium, but instead this gewgaw emerged. Never mind. Since I appear to have been blocked for about a year, I’ll take what’s given to me.



Song of the Hedge Fund Manager

I reject the imputation
That we built a babeltower of credit
on no foundation
of reality. Well, I mean,
How green. What is real anyway? Time isn't.
Nor is information, nor photographs.
Money never has been.

Every clock and wristwatch hazards at
its own approximation of the time:
None are right, none can be. There's only the gaps
And the hedging, inbetween.

Some disapprobation for over-selling
I accept. But get real:
This was coming since the first Lydian
Stamped his face on foil.
Even Croesus was crunched in the end. Money wasn't.
Those towers built of glass and steel,
Herons and Gherkins, those are real,
And will remain so, and will fill again,
While between them the clocktowers, obsolete in brown,
Dwarfish, and embarrassing as old uncles,
Count themselves down.

2 comments:

Nige said...

I like it! An almost Larkinesque note at the end there...

monix said...

I like it, too, especially the last stanza.