I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down

From long French windows at a provincial town,

The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad

In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

 

from Philip Larkin, Money

 

Wearing worry about money like a hair shirt

I lie down in my bed and wrestle with my angel.

My bank-manager could not sanction my continuance for another day

But life itself wakes me each morning, and love

Urges me to give although I have no money

In the bank at this moment, and ought properly

To cease to exist in a world where poverty

Is a shameful and ridiculous offence.

Having no one to advise me, I open the Bible

And shut my eyes and put my finger on a text

And read that the widow with the young son

Must give first to the prophetic genius

From the little there is in the bin of flour and the cruse of oil.

 

 

Kathleen Raine, Worry About Money