GREED

Not even a Cyclops can stop him from shoving

well bred folks out of his way, brazenly cutting to

the front of the line.

A master of the proxy fight and poison pill,

his greenmail raids are sure to kill or leave enemies

quaking, immured in handcuffs of tarnished gold.

A skillful culinary artist, no sommelier can choose

a better wine, yet when dinner guests arrive

they sneer behind his back in hush-hush tones:

“He’s nothing but a fish peddler’s son, a Galitziana

from the Bronx who can put together deals with

the zeal and lightening strikes he used snapping up

carp in the tub of their Jerome Avenue fish store.”

Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil got it right:

A son of a brutish Kapo, a swaggering bully,

shamelessly bulldozing those who played by rules,

joining the treachery of business as usual, like Dow’s Bhopal,

the blackened stain of Exxon’s spill, Kazlowski’s hand

in the Tyco till, Fastow, Lay and Skilling’s killing

and Bernie Ebber’s fuzzy math that left him with

King Kong’s dazed look behind iron bars, a legacy

of the indifference to the grief of others, mindlessly

addicted to always wanting more and more.

Milton P. Ehrlich 199 Christie St. Leonia, N.J. 07605