Title: Accounting Poem

Author: MICHAEL MINTROM

In: Sport 31: Spring 2003

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, November 2003

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

Conditions of use

Share:

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 31: Spring 2003

Accounting Poem

page 95

Accounting Poem

Wonderful blue sky! God took the roof off the house.

Tutankhamon's treasures winked in the sunlight.
The parents exchanged cross words.

Three in the afternoon, a chill on the neck.
Earlier we had great larks in the shed—
Uncle Milt taught us how to cook the books.

Fortunately we had an amateur historian in the family.
She was especially good with date scones.

Lately we'd been badgering her constantly,
What with daylight saving and daylight robbery.

Five intellectual histories of Bulls,
Four anthologies of rural love songs,

Three biographies of James Katherine Muldoon,
Two poems of innocence and economics, and not

One even footnote bloody mention of us!

page 96

Six men, black suited, paced the drive.
We're here for the coffin said the first.

From the parlour, our oldest aunt replied
He's being dressed, won't be long.

Next, someone was screwing on the top—
Deaths big and little on Orchard Lake Road.

Seven years in suburbia. What were you thinking?

Mostly we dreamed of making it big,
Of building pyramids in the desert
Fed by the national grid.

Motley, nightmarish singing,
Shredded pyjamas and such,
Awaking when they screwed off the lid.

Ate too much cake. This is our fate:
The middle class, eating, disorder.

In his later years, joining the church.
Double entry book-keeping,

The life of the soul, the life of the flesh.
Still he was good with his clients,

And good with the children.
Death—accruel accounting.

page 97

Night fell. We left the roof off
and gazed into the TV, through rain.

Rugby. Nothing had changed—
until you looked closely.

Once we owned the stars, the sun, the earth.
Now everything had changed.

Look at us all, dumb as ever,
Sliding down the food chain.

Nobody warned us. Everyone did.

Tentatively, the words emerged. First one
Then the rest, flying from the ark, bat-like
Auditing the rooms, suspending themselves,
Creating new layers of dung.

Eventually, we exhumed our forebears,
Pasted them on donkeys and headed for Eden Terrace.
Coins, old hymns, and small family treasures
Clinked in the sunshine, making rainbows.

Tomorrow, we told ourselves, tomorrow
We'll fire up the tubes on one.