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Poem: Art 105: Wall Street
Critical Perspectives on Accounting (1997) 8 , 123
Art 105: Wall Street This must be the light of a holy land where heat dissolves the upper halves of towers in lucent skies, and alley doors below are lost in shadow imposed by towers themselves, though it’s rather ashen here, not from recent smoke, but mist rising from a harbor floor where warm currents meet the cold and good for washing granite down to an absence of idea while, at a main perspective point, in breach of light and light, a miniature steeple is caught. A priest in white flutters from an arch toward headstones tossed like toys—perhaps vandals were here; and straightaway from the Sabbath gloom another figure moves, foreshortened, centered in the deserted street, swaying toward the church with sixty pounds of bananas on his back, green bananas hoisted above a wide beard and splayed feet, seemingly headed from east to west, from wharf to wharf with coca in the hair, in the teeth, in the fruit. He turns into an alley now—to meet a boat?—and is gone, unseen by the priest in a complicity of sun. The priest also disappears, no doubt to secure the chancel and the alms. We, equally unseen, may now inspect the district’s artifacts —bronze grates, walls of glass—and recall the real reasons fenestration went out (aside from cost) when gentlemen leapt into parades like the banker, McLean, totting up his loss (his wife had dreamt their life away) and the legend of Ruth, willing to commute for forty-two years to earn her watch, and all we cannot see (we need a docent to unlock a vault): miles of silvered flue moving the air around, the priest’s mother’s account which is now defunct and McLean’s son’s wife’s picture in back of a drawer, even Ruth’s cardboard eraser box. We need a docent to recite the truth. Though what we’ve seen may be enough—green stalk riding through a darkened street on this August Sunday at noon as we stand, hidden within a frozen revolving door.
Tinker White
(pa960100) 123
Art 105: Wall Street This must be the light of a holy land where heat dissolves the upper halves of towers in lucent skies, and alley doors below are lost in shadow imposed by towers themselves, though it’s rather ashen here, not from recent smoke, but mist rising from a harbor floor where warm currents meet the cold and good for washing granite down to an absence of idea while, at a main perspective point, in breach of light and light, a miniature steeple is caught. A priest in white flutters from an arch toward headstones tossed like toys—perhaps vandals were here; and straightaway from the Sabbath gloom another figure moves, foreshortened, centered in the deserted street, swaying toward the church with sixty pounds of bananas on his back, green bananas hoisted above a wide beard and splayed feet, seemingly headed from east to west, from wharf to wharf with coca in the hair, in the teeth, in the fruit. He turns into an alley now—to meet a boat?—and is gone, unseen by the priest in a complicity of sun. The priest also disappears, no doubt to secure the chancel and the alms. We, equally unseen, may now inspect the district’s artifacts —bronze grates, walls of glass—and recall the real reasons fenestration went out (aside from cost) when gentlemen leapt into parades like the banker, McLean, totting up his loss (his wife had dreamt their life away) and the legend of Ruth, willing to commute for forty-two years to earn her watch, and all we cannot see (we need a docent to unlock a vault): miles of silvered flue moving the air around, the priest’s mother’s account which is now defunct and McLean’s son’s wife’s picture in back of a drawer, even Ruth’s cardboard eraser box. We need a docent to recite the truth. Though what we’ve seen may be enough—green stalk riding through a darkened street on this August Sunday at noon as we stand, hidden within a frozen revolving door.
Tinker White
(pa960100) 123