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Search forWith Apologies to John Keats
Saturday, November 15, 2008, 07:00
Season of misery, season of fretfulness
Season of meltdown has really begun
Workers redundant are showing their bitterness
Excuses political shouted and spun
Mortgages blocked by the tight credit squeeze
People are losing their homes by the score
Merely surviving their various hells
Rash speculators are hiding their sleaze
Casting their victims on bankruptcy's shore
Barring the gates on their posh citadels
Season of scrimping and season of ruin
Season's despondency, season of gloom
Final demands for full payment accruing
Fiscal debacle instead of the boom
Conscience of banker is dead or asleep
(Entrepreneurial fool or a crook?)
Bailed out by squeezed so dry taxpayers' cash
Hard road to solvency's pinnacle steep
Citizens confidence heartily shook
Frightened by threat of harsh penalty's lash
Season that's lacking the guidelines financial
Season created by plotting and greed
Political leadership weak, insubstantial
Managers making society bleed
Anxiety preys on the uneasy mind
Creditors gnawing at withering hope
Voters are falling betrayal of trust
Citizens to a bleak future resigned
Existing to struggle, existing to cope
Chancellors boasting deflated to bust
Season of crisis, time of recession
Season of hopelessness, season of pain
Time of the leading banks strict repossession
Homelessness worry — the thirties again?
Purses are empty and belts are pulled tight
Counting the pennies to budget and save
Endure the anguish of poverty's threat
Negligent acts a cold anger ignite
Worried investors full recompense crave
Rather than meaningless sounds of regret.
Stuart Walters
Llwyn Carw, Morriston, Swansea
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