Your Poverty Poem by Diana van den Berg

Repulsed,
and powerless to help you
in your abject poverty,
in frozen mind
I saw and heard you
on my television screen...
and paralysed, I
heard about your distorted values
and your supercilious vanity
and your six hundred
pairs of shoes
and your eight
luxury cars
and your imminent gift
of a ninth
from your husband two and a half times your age
- there where you sat and frothed
in the fur of
how many animals?

(19 May 2006)