Money

Something cheery for Monday morning...

I am your master and your master’s master,

I am the dragon’s teeth which you have sown

In the field of dead men’s and live men’s bones.

I am the moving belt you cannot turn from :

The threat behind the smiling of the clock :

The paper on which your days are signed and witnessed

Which only the mouse and the moth and the flame

          Dare devour.

I an the rustle of bank-notes in your graves,

The crackle of lawyer’s seals beneath your tombstones,

Borne to the leaning ears of legatees.

I am the cunning one whose final cunning

Was to buy grace, to corner loveliness,

To make a bid for beauty and to win it

And lock it away.

A S J Tessimond (1902 - 1962)