Poetry Magazine
The Final Morbidity of the Interior Embezzler
It may seem morbid of an embezzler to keep a memorandum, yet many of them do. It may be mere neatness.
-Wallace Stevens, "Surety and Fidelity Claims"
I've made a little sluice-gate in the flow
of cash across the spreadsheet on my screen.
Amid torrential chaos and foreseen
disasters it maintains its small and slow
on-off diversions, so my work can show
the delicacy of difference between
the beans I count and one uncounted bean,
and where the latter might invisibly go.
The hollowed shoe-tree, the hermetic jar
are gadgetry I might revert to yet.
There is the money of the thing, the far
secure retirement years, the deep-hedged bet,
but I love working where the unknowns are,
and writing down what I need to forget.
Source: Poetry (July 2002).
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This poem originally appeared in the July 2002 issue of Poetry magazine
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Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Arts & Sciences, Social Commentaries, Money & Economics, Humor & Satire
POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic
Poetic Terms Sonnet
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