Budgetary Matters
The spreadsheet is all before you. The farther
left you travel, the more desirable things become.
Indeed the items named seem not just necessary
but inevitable, prophesied. As you travel toward
the reckoning right hand of calculation, the less
possible things seem. You think of Zeno's Paradox.
You begin to feel an urge to save rubber-bands
and bits of string, to eat left-overs and sew
your own clothes. When you finally arrive
in the severe, humorless zone of the numbers-column,
you then descend toward the hell of the Bottom Line,
which is, oddly enough, often represented by two lines.
At that line, expenses devour entrails of income.
Accountants costumed in gray feathers perform
a ghastly arithmetical dance. You hear someone
mumble, 'Nothing we can afford is worth doing, '
to which you respond, 'Nothing worth doing
is quantifiable.' You stand up and demand
to know the origin of money. You are forcibly
exported from the room. As you depart, you
hear someone say, 'I think we just found
some extra money in the budget.'
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem