MONEY WEALTH

Bank notes are to the State

What gold was to the Kingdom - confirmation

Of a materialist bias, a kind of focal-point

And raison d'être of business activity,

Attesting to the ideological stranglehold

Of contemporary economics over life,

Making money an ideal of the State

No less than finding gold was an ideal

Of the more materialistic Kingdom.

Have you ever noticed how obsessed

The contemporary world is with money,

Or are you too obsessed by it yourself

To be conscious of the world's obsession,

Taking it all for granted?

Speaking as a poet, I can only say that I have noticed

The contemporary world's obsession with money

And feel truly disgusted by it!

Not a day passes without some media news

About the state of the pound

Against foreign currency (particularly the dollar),

News of stock-exchange values,

The state of the economy,

Wage demands or price controls,

Inflation and recession,

Bank robberies or pools jackpots,

Liquidations and amalgamations,

Savings deposits and interest rates,

Losses and profits,

Public expenditure or private investment,

Taxes and fines,

Budgets and price increases,

The sinking value of this

Against the rising value of that, and so on ...

To the greater material glory of the State,

That modern Moloch which devours the spirit

In the name of the flesh,

The poor in the interests of the rich,

Making wealth the contemporary ideal,

Whether hogged by the Few

Or shared between the Many,

All struggling for more, no end in sight

To the darkness of economic slavery,

The age of the living dead,

Both bourgeois and proletarian,

Capitalist and socialist.