Surge And Recession. 

Just another stock flotation:
let's see who is really solvent,
   and who is in it up to their necks.
Just another art quotation;
pleading personal involvement
   while drowning the art in a flurry of cheques.

  Just a few are full of bluster:
They hold their own on a self-made mount,
standing their ground on what they can save,
hoping it won't be dissolved away.
  But most; a repayment is all they can muster.
The ebb and flow of the current account
sweeps them backward with each passing wave
at the end of a ten year rainy day.

There are some who ride the raging tide
   on a life-boat from the bank clerks;
and some who must flee beyond the sea -
   or be eaten by the loan sharks.

From the smallest welling spring of a wee scots burn
  to the nearly stagnant languor of the Tamar and Thames,
millions of people work and pray the tide will turn,
  feeling like King Canute while the banker condemns.

    But others, who must be running scared,
    running like a river in flood,
might pray that those with whom they've not shared
will not end this state with a river of blood.

And some, who I think are so much lower,
   are giving themselves full marks
for all of this wholesale cultural slaughter.
   The wanton rich are playing Noah.
   They're building their cultural arks,
   and using the rest of us as the water.