Yet Another Scandal
It’s all corrupt, of course it is.
The camouflage just confirms the immutable pattern.
The boy from the outskirts,
caressed for his plasticity and powers of abstraction,
is drawn in deeper and deeper, either on Wall Street,
buffered by tall buildings, or in
the sleepy state capitols—
Dover, Tallahassee, Pierre.
Even he is dazzled by miraculous returns on the money.
What he does, though, he does not for money
(which would be sane) but
of course, of course, of course, of course
for love, for the love
his prestidigitations engender
(which is not sane).
Therefore is he choked in the coils
of his being’s enormous Ponzi scheme,
and, also, his children turn away
in shock and disrepair.
Which makes me glad
that I let the investigation proceed in a timely fashion.
I opened my offshore accounts to scrutiny.
I turned my wife in.
When the lawyers from Treasury came to my house
to pore over my dictionaries,
I made them coffee and listened to their troubles.
.
by Vijay Seshadri
from 3 Sections
Graywolf Press, 2013