INVESTMENT

INVESTMENT

on a farm somewhere
in Africa
    everywhere
in the world

lost everything
except, maybe,
my British accent

all those flat Northern vowels
as if opening them out
would be
    like opening a door
to huge pretension

and the dream too
    that is getting packed away
my intellectual heritage
getting sold for
what bit I can get
at the flea market

the book that told us
to be fruitful and multiply
did not have
the nous, the where-
withal to think

billion dollar takeovers
trillion dollar debt

mortgaging all the taxes
ever paid
     to offset the god-blessed
stupidity of
disastrous investment