The Money Tree

Hail you fool blind-eyed prophet!
What coming storms did you see
In your red rage-madness
And your black death-sadness
When the gods sang doom to thee?

I saw seven billion living bodies
Hanging from a dying tree
Bound by golden nooses and surrounded
By the sea
Some trampling their brothers to climb high up
In the swaying, failing tree
For those in the high limbs need not suffer
Poverty
And the tightness of their nooses lessened
As they fled the rising sea

I saw a storm-swell rising on the red and
Raging sea
Waves lapping hungrily at the roots of
The ancient and rotten tree
And all who hung upon it must soon die
Or be free

Begone you lying prophet!
No black stormclouds do I see
With your foolish, blind madness
You would blacken my gladness
The sun still shines down on me!

Your words bring tears to my light-blinded eyes
I hear you turn – do not flee!
My dead eyes see that which sight alone can
Never see
Wrapped tight round our necks is a chain of gold
Yet invisible to thee
Used to its weight, you bear its links, smiling
Carelessly
Perhaps you’ve lived too high, too long in that
Old tottering money tree
Remember not the choking threat of hard
Poverty

If your sighted eyes could view the things that
My blind ones may still yet see
You too would howl with rage and take an axe
To the tree

Photo from here.