You, Alan Greenspan

And here face down upon your desk
Watching through the waiting night
You feel the coming of a test
The gathered rising of a blight

You feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of loss and woe
Upon the world's markets the vast
And ever climbing shadows grow

So first in Tokyo the breeze
Carries now the scent of change
The Nikkei sinks down to its knees
Buried beneath a mountain range

And now in Korea the state
Of markets sunk in deep despair
Slumps slowly as the whispered fate
Of recession hangs in the air

And Hong Kong too begins to fall,
The gains of these last years soon gone
And through all Asia the pall
Of evening deepens and steals on

It deepens, too, in Mumbai's street
Where watchful eyes mark the decline
The shuffling of nervous feet
Marks the mocking march of time

And later still in Frankfurt, then
in Paris comes the dreadful blow
As to the west the eyes of Men
Turn, fearful, seeing sands run low

And London, last to feel the weight
Of failure through the far-flung lands;
Crushed downwards, it too meets its fate
Beneath the Invisible Hand


Comes now the cold light on the sea...


And you, facing the night so long,
Await, with dreadful certainty
The market opening at dawn...

•  To This Coy Distress

  Watching the advancing collapse of markets, circling the globe as Wall Street waits out MLK Day.... well, it was either this, or "The Nine Billion Names of God."

  by Ray Radlein on Mon Jan 21, 2008 at 10:36:14 PM PDT

  •  in a similar vein, but divergent style

    I did this late last night.

    I love your "Buried beneath a mountain range."

    I love that Greenspan had to be thinking he was the incarnation of Ayn Rand's dying orgasm 2 years ago, and now, as your poem illustrates, he is headed straight for infamy.  I hope Rand spirals down history's waste pipe with him.

    I also love that the wingers will soon be blaming the MLK holiday for causing the crash, saying that it's god God Jehovah's way of punishing us for honoring an adulterer.  

    Gotta get back to eatin babies.

    by nailbender on Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 08:47:14 PM PDT

    •  Somewhere, Howard Roark is laughing.

      by Champurrado on Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 08:50:08 AM PDT

•  Nice work, Ray

  You must write a follow-up after the dust clears on Tuesday or Wednesday.

  This is scary.

  by Ekaterin on Mon Jan 21, 2008 at 10:42:41 PM PDT

•  LOL! "Marvell"ous. I'm teaching

  To His Coy Mistress tomorrow. Kismet.

  New last lines:

  And tear our money with rough strife
  Thorough the iron gates of life.
  Thus, though we cannot make our economy
  Stand still, yet we will share the ignominy.

  (My bad. My bad poet.)

  by begone on Mon Jan 21, 2008 at 10:44:27 PM PDT

  •  My Friend Andy

    An unholy fraction of my entire life has been taken up with writing and rewriting different pastiches of "To His Coy Mistress," I'm afraid.

    For instance, one of my rotating cast of usenet .sigs was a couplet from "The Mysterious Men of X" (published by Marvell Comics):

    But at my back I alwaies hear
    Magneto's minions hurrying near

    by Ray Radlein on Mon Jan 21, 2008 at 10:49:25 PM PDT

•  from his Horataion upon Cromwell's

  defeat of the Irish, the last stanza:

  But Thou, the War's and Fortune's son,
  March indefatigably on;
     And for the last effect
     Still keep the sword erect:

  Besides the force it has to fright
  The spirits of the shady night,
     The same arts that did gain
     A power, must it maintain.

  in other words, the chickens always come home to roost.

  Your piece reminds me more of that poem than THCM.

  by nailbender on Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 09:37:54 PM PDT