Ways of coping with loss

Death and disasters don’t make much difference to Lloyd’s of London bosses

Simon English writing in The Independent, 29 March 2011

A city tailor's clients sifting beans in the old

Lime Street coffee shop get misty eyed.

That great collapse of 2011 was when

we last felt alive, we mattered then —

shat ourselves in the fall, but made a killing

when the dust had settled. This new lot though

make 9/11 look like an act of God.

You can look away or lend a hand,

an ear or a voice, you can pick

over the bones of the fallen,

try on their shoes, make hay on the cheap

meat, hold the line or let it slip

through your fingers, become inured to it all

or insure it away like those men in fine suits.

Christchurch shook us, all that rubble,

it could have been St Andrew Undershaft,

and their dead looked just like us.

Not like Thailand, a sodden orange rag

snagged on a wallowing log shaped curiously

like the Buddha, (karmic comeuppance

for sex on the beach?) or the Japanese

fishing boats dry-docked in villages

landlocked by salt lakes that once were paddies.

Three billion pounds the lot, paid out in full

at a loss. Corks are popping nonetheless

in city bars because, like those fortunate

unfortunates, the suits are fully insured

and assured an excellent vintage this year.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet