This poem came from reading the financial pages, where I first heard the phrases, “panic and euphoria” and “fiscal corsets.”
A panic, of course, is when the stock market drops dramatically because everyone is selling and trying to get out of their overpriced investments. Euphoria is the giddiness we feel when we get a windfall, or something unexpected happens, like the CDC tells us to take off our masks.
Fiscal corsets was a term used to describe the German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s government’s oversight of every penny given out for an innovation fund, so that the process of funding new ideas was much slower than in other countries. It could also refer to the reluctance of our own government to help, in a timely way, those who have suffered financially from this most recent crisis, whether by losing their own home, or losing rents owed on their property, or losing an actual breadwinner or child-care-taker, or heaven forbid, a child.
I think it is interesting, that the stock market climbs and climbs and hardly stalls at all, just as the number of infections rise ever more precipitously.
As if our sickness were contributing, somehow, to our economy’s good fortune.
Sorry, to be the bearer of bad tidings again, but these past few weeks have brought little more than bad news. Delta, Afghanistan falling to the Taliban, etc.
Hope things are better in your neck of the woods.
Thanks for coming by to read.
From brief relief, we wake,
And teary-eyed, we peer at screens.
The world, again, has gone to Hell.
There lies no in-between
Of sort-of safety, nearly normal,
Manageable panic.
We’ve plunged back down that black abyss.
We’re locked in some dark attic.
Yet we pretend, defy the dread.
We clutch at straws, still hoping,
Though one more straw of this
Misfortune, and our backs are broken.
We wheeze and gasp, in fiscal corsets,
Strain, against our fate,
And wonder, can a hero save us?
Can a reprobate?
As stocks rise high and futures fall,
So we arise, in death:
Our panic and euphoria
Have taken our last breath.
Copyright 2021 Andrea LeDew
For more ruminations on graphs and charts, read The Deadliest Day. For a poem about someone who finds it hard to believe it’s nearly over, read Darkest Hour.
I predicted every single one of these surges. I hate being right.
Yes, I too feared, that these optimistic measures would come back to bite us. But I did hope…😔
🙁
Yes. It would be so good for us if these horrible times would teach us to let go of both panic and euphoria. We would be happier without them.
I hate how Delta came right on the heels of the official all-clear signal. Like no good deed (such as lowering the rate of infection markedly) goes unpunished. I also find these highs and lows unnerving. I prefer calm–slow and steady wins the race, as my dad used to say.