City Boy
In a moment of love I caught a sense of money
and how they make it, and make it up. That city boy,
comfortable and sharp in a suit that fits him,
steers through the station when the city bars have closed,
and an evening of gin is a good anaesthetic
when he trips and smacks the concrete. He’ll get home,
he‘ll recover in the faith that the concrete
is his dream of money: work and lust
made into metal and paper, made into numbers
that whisper to each other, transact and multiply.
Even after closing time, spreadsheets
are building up office blocks, and credit
that creates the pavement to land on.
I saw the drunken city exercise discretion, and
the sober city dream of how to keep it happening.
I watched the city boy get up and walk. I felt how this money
is part of us, and keeps ourselves within it. Some of it
has to be love, what we hope and where we’re tender.
All we have is to trust for it to care for us, curse us
and keep us in harness, to work for something in a city
made out of buildings and people standing up, or falling down.
– Peter Daniels
The Pedantess 