And the benefit of experience and bestowed inheritance
You are hardly more prepared to face life than I am!
Yet all these years march between us,
And it is your noble privilege;
And my pauper’s lot.
We packed the car and drove to the shore to visit the relatives.
It was long and enervating, and I was confronted with the chasm:
It stands between the poverty of youth, and old riches.
How curious are the trappings of affluence
Subtle veils of cultural illusion petrified into mechanical rituals
And social patterns of acceptable behavior.
The house was like a great archive, or crypt;
A museum of objects of very little service
Wealth was the displayable credit.
I love my shack, permeable as it is.
My floors are covered with the trails of the day’s excursions
Spider webs glisten in the slant of sun.
I sit at table and listen to morning rising from a thousand throats
Watching the kaleidoscope of new light
Playing its virtue out over the hungry land.
I guess it is worth a little while to sit in pillowed luxury
On top of pile carpets, breathing centrally controlled air
Listening to the manias of over-refined entertainment
And carefully scripted media
It makes poverty so renewing.
Why don’t you come over some night?
I’ll open my hope chest
And show you my diamonds, flung out across the cold black sky.
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