I hurried lonely as the crowd
Of strangers with a flood of bills
They had to pay if time allowed,
Before the bank foreclosed with chills
And trampled them, no 'if you please.'
Stuttering, crushing finance squeeze.
Conspicuous as their tears combine
And dribble down the blinky way
They shuffle endless, as headline
Allows on margin they could pay
For great big house, with grand expanse
And indisputed elegance...
The poor beside them smile what they
Had never had the means to be--
They'd always done without that way.
And banks had little need to see
Their credit dead, mere afterthought
Of wealth that foolish risk had bought.
And later when they cannot buy
Another gold-encrusted mood,
Perhaps grateful, may they know why!
Lucky yet for wholesome food,
In Gift of Glory's sunrise-thrill,
They can give thanks for beauty still.
Author notes
I had to quote this from memory in elementary school:
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/2902-William-Wordsworth-The-Daffodils "I wandered lonely as a cloud..."
With thanks to MargaretG who found it for me too!
A contest entry
- Parodies (serious or satirical) #62 by Lyndon.
3970 points, ended April 6, 2008, 11 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Social comment on motivations?
Comments
1 - 29 of 29
-
Your thought brought my reflection of :
I pondered what you said too loud
About that Bush on yonder hill,
Should represent the strong and proud
But spills an essence of ill will.
And though limbs quake beneath those leaves,
We stand around like helpless trees.
While all our stars that used to shine
Are clouded in by smog and haze,
Across the pond a deadly vine
Twines round a mass of unmarked graves.
As thousands morn, those vines advance
to smother truth with consequence.
Goodbye fair lands, I heard you say,
And long gone ~ global sympathy.
Some poets cringe while lacking sway
To document true empathy.
Our gaze is glazed by horrid thought
For what we had … we had not bought!
Some now reflect on years gone by
When lies merged with inaptitude,
Back when we heard the prattle cry,
And lives evolved around that mood.
I think with ink, I am not proud
While pondering what you said, too loud ...
© Joy Burki-Watson
-
Thanks Terry
I appreciate you sharing your expressions on today's economy...not a good time right now. This is one of the best works I have seen today. THANKS!
-
Awesome!
I look forward to taking your class!
-
-
And the welcome mat is out!
You have a choice of two courses, each with access to two trophies. I'll describe them by IM, and hope you'll decide to go for both, as Florida Sunshine did.
She would tell you it gets pretty exciting!
Terry
-
-
This is a sermon.
You are preaching to the converted here. My father was an orphan. He was a very young man during the Great Depression. Ten years later, my ears picked up all he had
been through. Joy and I have never owed anybody anything except love.
We began humbly ... with no Christmas presents to each other when we had just actually bought our first fibro bungalow. Second-hand furniture. It lasted 30 years!
Today, we are retired on a Range where the land is worth a fortune because of the see-forever views. My wife was a Quaker and she could not see the sense or morality of wearing a new shirt on tomorrow's wages. Our level of poverty would have shocked North Americans.
Wordsworth was not well off. His riches lay in nature. In his lakeside cottage, one may see, beside the springs of Dove, his children's rooms lined with London newspapers to keep out the cold.
Now, how did this diatribe happen? Oh, your poem.
Indeed, a timely satire. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Wordsworth, himself, said:
"The world is too much with us;
Getting and spending, we lay waste our pow'rs ..."
The quote is from memory. Thank you poet. I can see you did not come down in the last shower!
-
-
Lyndon, thank you
You understand the benefits of early poverty!
Yours made me think: dangerous ground!
The differences are clear, from observation of folks who grew up in unrestricted plenty. They are like a different species, I swear. Taking things for granted, not noticing the small free gifts of Nature, disdaining the poor but proud, it truly is their loss but never accepted as such. Their wasteful privileges become entitlements, and don't you dare deny it!
Then we have those with aspirations far above their means, whose fiscal ambitions are based on envy, and served by greed. Easily suckered, it is far worse for the pretenders living on the avails of credit, when suddenly their lifestyle dies. For them the apparent loss of wealth and its privileges may be far more devastating than it really needs to be, sometimes discovering that fair-weather friends no longer are...
While the smaller needs of less affluent folk make ostentatious consumption not only unnecessary but a waste,
there is a lack of fit in other ways as well. Reality has a clarity that is based on appreciation of gifts that cannot be bought. Real friends. Contentment in the comfort of rare personal qualities such as acceptance of the inner need to be observant, empathetic, supportive, productive, things that bring rewards of the greatest comfort and as a goal, peace!
The forgotten folk, hungry and haunted by illness and bad life-decisions, living in abject poverty, striving only for respect while unfamiliar with its benefits--they are like victims of perpetual war, who will soon outnumber the other three worldwide, if they do not do so already. The wealth of the top ten, I read--not ten percent--could feed the entire population of the world, (if indeed food has not been converted to ethanol!) Few do.
Enough. Warned you.
Terry -
-
Terry
I agree with the thrust of each point you make.
-
-
-
Oh very clever... Bravo!
-
-
Don't know if using --
so much grief as a source of on-going commentary on the foolishness of fakery is laudable, but it just sat there waiting for me. There are times when being a retired person barely above the poverty line is a distinct advantage! It allows me to live in a century-old house with a large back yard, several old trees and few pretensions of luxury. Everything in this small town is within easy walking-distance, and boating on the river is not only excellent but free!
Nice to hear from you!
Terry
-
-
This is a great twist on the origional So many home owners in single home suburbia , live under a vailed image struggling below the surface just out of sight from the rest of the world, they pull up to their beautiful homes, go in and sit on their lawn fu
-
-
And a new temptation for those --
--who still remain borderline solvent! It must be working, for the catalog company is spending millions on more and more fervent TV advertising on furnishings and improvements at "less than half price." Bill, I'm not convinced that Direct Buy sells lawn furniture... but the idea is the same. Fakery prevails! Pride hides. Actors pretend to have saved tens of thousands on kitchen counters and faucet sets like those that our local hardware sells at twenty bucks. And the song goes on...doubtless with credit used. I hope the TV companies get paid in cash!
Nothing is as gullible as greed when it buys "brands their wealthy neighbours buy." I guess they'll continue until everyone has been squeezed dry.
I look at this and shake my head. UN-be-lie-vable!
Terry
-
-
From Daffodiils to Real Estate Crash
might just be a sign of genious! Daffodils, after all, are most likely abodes for aphids, lady bugs and bees too laden with pollen to fly back to the hive. Daffodils wilt at the end of every season and foreclose on their insect host. OK, that was a stretch, but I enjoyed your poem as well. -
-
devious even!
My parody might have done well to match the content rather than the form! In its extended time, your nature-message fit both the original by Wordsworth and the contemporary social comment surprisingly well!
Thank you for that!
Terry
-
-
As we pay for the big fake economy,
it's nice to find a wry smile at our need to pay for those with tiny incomes and giant homes.
To parody the invention of Hallmark rhyme with a substantive work, that spills from the toungue so easily, is a great trick. I like yours better.
-
-
And pay, we all do.
I think you caught the real meaning in mine really well.
In their wish to appear richer than they were, the "low incomes" wanted more house than they could afford. Like manna from heaven they discovered and trusted the gift of "sub-par financing"--that is without enough down payment to avoid the hidden second mortgage and the "paper" that various financial companies bought from real-estate companies (who benefitted instantly and thus were the only ones not to lose their shirts.) Please correct me if anything here is wrong.!
The "paper" in turn was picked up by banks all over the world, it seems, with the big underfunded houses as equity, and some went under when the original sub-par contracts lapsed and normal payments were expected. Of course the "owners" could not make the new mortgage payments, and had to sell or be foreclosed. Few were buying.
Ancillary to all this were the innocents whose jobs were lost or downsized because so many no longer could afford to buy non-essential stuff their company produced. They lost homes too, adding their pain to the mess.
Huge tracts of fertile farmland had been sacrificed to housing that now sat begging for buyers. Unsold liabillity caused 40% rise in bankruptcies (According to Harper's Index ) and many financial companies tumbled, putting the burden on banks even in countries that were not in any way connected to the sad debacle.
All because clever financiers benefited from foolish pride.
Go figger.
-
-
I wandered, lonely, till I found
A queue outside the Northern Rock
Where sad investors all were bound
To take their savings out of hock.
And oft when on my couch I lie
I think of that unending queue
And tenners flash before my eye
For I withdrew my money, too.
I'd like to add my support to the Wordsworth cause. Three cheers for Lakeland Bill!
Nice parody, by the way.
-
-
Lakeland Bill--
would be William, right? Where would Lakeland be? It's tough being on different continents.
Two more verses and a few more lines would have given you an entry too. That was fun. Thanks much!
Terry -
-
I forgot about the continental shift. Forgive me. Lakeland is just the Lake District, and I'm just being familiar with William W. I think Wordsworth probably had a sense of humour. I've visited his cottage in the Lake District and one of the most intereting objects on display is Coleridge's opium measure (which I have to say was fairly copious!) No wonder he didn't finish many poems. I'm surprised he could stay awake long enough to write at all. And of course William lived with his sister Dorothy....but I'm sure their relationship was innocence itself.
-
-
Living in Canada's Northern Ontario with its hundreds of lakes small, medium, and very big, I am still not clear about Lake District. Every town here has several lakes to choose from, cities, more, and countless others that people can only fly to. Not that it makes a whit of difference in the price of gasoline of course... I was just curious because we do not have a lake district.
Not many poets either of the calibre of Wordsworth and Coleridge, unsure if there is any connection!
-
-
-
-
Pay no attention to Jeff - Wordsworth is The Business. Get the ripple of "Daffs" right, add a touch of a Northern accent, and bingo! This is a nicely turned parody.
-
-
It is always pleasant to find that someone enjoyed a poem, regardless of the stumbles we hope no one notices, or else too polite to mention! (For that, IM works fine.)
we can but try. Thank you!
-
-
I love it, but then anyone puncturing Wordsworth can't be bad!
-
-
Lol
The Wordsworth poem it "punctured" while perfect in form, rhyme and meter, in my more informed opinion--having left my childhood FAR behind, is just a tad lacking in depth!
Thank you,
Terry
-
-
It's easy to make mistakes with money, and hard to recover. This poem shows two sides of the credit card, as the poor bless their poverty and the newly poor weep. I like your phrase "gold-encrusted mood", and your imagery takes us out on the street to witness the crisis.
Good luck in the contest!
-
-
Contrast
--with the happy mood of Wordsworth's poem is a facet of this parody, Street compared to Nature, describing as it does the financial woes that have cause immense grief almost world-wide. You saw internal contrast in resilience too between the peace of "the working poor" and those who allowed themselves to be talked into credit disaster. To tie the comparison together, there is a fair amount of word-for-word matching that led the rest of the poem in its own directions.
Thank you, M!
-
-
Odd to read this ...
as I just heard that a bank in the Netherlands has defaulted on 37,000,000 dollars because 7 creditors presented bills for payment and they didn't have the money to pay. What a strange world we live in.
Good job on the poem in any case.
-
-
The end is slightly edited. (It sent before it was ready.)
The futures of many have been clouded by foreclosures.
The parody is in contrast with Wordworth's happy poem.
It has been devastating for so many who foolishly bought into the belief that they could trust the Economy to last forever and thus bought far more house than later they could afford. But you had seen that already.
What is difficult for those not directly involved must be truly cataclysmic for those in foreclosure, still in deep debt.
Thanks for reading it, and noting the coincidence...
Terry
-
-
Wordsworth and economics - strange bedfellows indeed. I love your take on the credit crunch. As old Ms. Morse used to tell us grade 4s, "If it looks too good to be true . . . "
-
-
Thanks Mike,
What gets me about this whole picture is that the real-estate companies got rich on the gullibility of greed. Nobody saw *them* lose money on all the grief.
The other question of course follows: those purchasers who suffer most are those whose dreams changed their life styles radically--can a person who sees all things through $$$ in their eyes ever again see the beauty around them, free of cost?
Cheers,
Terry
-
Adding your comment:
1 - 29 of 29
