Money: A Primer
Money, children, was invented to symbolize
Precise amounts of bread.
Instead of hauling jars of grain from here to there
We transferred clam shells instead.
Staples were set at exact sums of money.
A cow was five coins with the head of the prince.
A canoe was one crisp watermarked Isis.
No one has understood it since.
From the first, money spoke only
To other money. For instance, no Frenchman
Ever communicated with the franc
The way francs speak to marks with perfect comprehension.
But money only pretended to be jars of grain.
Money was time, scarcity, the capitalist yoke,
Security, ruin or evidence of salvation,
Depending on who spoke.
Money is our common global language,
As current as currency,
Yet decoding efforts have proved it less tractable
Than tree rings or Linear B.
Degrees are conferred, chairs awarded, prizes delivered
In Stockholm to those who have shown
That the eerily incestuous system of money
Should be managed or left alone.
The aforementioned have yet to explain how money
Springs from its own symbolic loins.
Words have never come up with words the way
Coins coin coins.
Freed from the drudgery of mere barter, money
Has pursued an intricate course
Through consortiums, cartels and multinationals
With the opacity of a natural force.
Money is a crude obsession with things,
Claims the anti-materialist schism.
This, at least, can be flatly declared wrong.
Money is mysticism.
(first published in Barron’s, included in Facing the Music)
