Economic Stress


The obvious flow of bills and silver

Accumulates in a noise of payments that obscures

The larger economic torrent that changes weather

In its longer streams.

The price of prodigality is the inflation of hunger

And the diminution of worth.


Ten million ball-point pens will not write letters

Of praise and comfort, and fifty million clips

Will not fasten the broken strings

Of unstrung lives.

 


Time itself is a stream stocked with numerals,

And the pollution of its figures

Stops up oceans.

- Sally Clay
June 8, 1983


*** Sharewrite 2005 Sally Clay ***
Permission is granted for personal distribution of this document
as long as it is unchanged in any way and this notice is included.
For permission to reprint it for general publication, contact me at
zangmo@sallyclay.net.

 


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